


Love, Hawke

by FasterPuddyTat



Series: Gall, Vitriol, and Wine: An Incomplete History [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff-uary 2020, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Canon Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), Rogue Hawke (Dragon Age), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22560058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FasterPuddyTat/pseuds/FasterPuddyTat
Summary: Varric buys Hawke a journal. Hawke names it after cheese.Companion piece to Everything from Hawke's POV, and my contribution to the Fluff-uary 2020 prompts. Most chapters will be multiple prompt fills because I am a savage and rules are more like guidelines, anyway. It's also taken on a life of its own, and will likely grow well beyond Fluff-uary to become something completely different.Regarding the diary form as a narrative framework, this isn't a true diary fic. The bulk of this is flashback style 3rd POV limited, because I started to write it all as diary entries, but my first person kept slipping and I didn't care to fight it.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Varric Tethras
Series: Gall, Vitriol, and Wine: An Incomplete History [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617364
Comments: 86
Kudos: 42





	1. Dear Kasei

Hello Journal,

No, I don’t care for that. Too impersonal. You need a proper name… are you a boy journal, or a girl journal? Somewhere in between? I’ll call you… Sam. Charlie. Pony. Ugh! I’ll call you Kasei, because that sounds like a person, but also like cheese.

Dear Kasei,

The dwarf says I should keep a journal. He keeps a journal, which I know because I make a point to pluck it from whatever clever hiding place it’s in when I visit him. His subjects are dry, but Maker’s breath his ears go bright red when he finds me with my boots on his table and his diary on my lap. I broke my favorite set of lock picks getting to it last time, but Kasei, it was worth it. His fingers grazed the inside of my thigh when he scooped it up, and you should have seen his face when he realized I wasn’t wearing leggings beneath my armor. 

Hey, don’t look at me like that! It was hot that day. 

Well. He threatened to buy me my own journal after the bare fingers on bare leg incident, though I’m still not sure whether it was in a fit of pique or to make amends. Knowing him? Both. I asked what I’d write about, as my life is hardly noteworthy. He said I should start with my year in the Reds. Shows what he knows. The mercs were dull beyond belief. It was always Hawke! Bring me the head of this person, or Hawke! Go shake down the merchants, or Hawke! What happened to my slaver clients, and why is there a jar of eyeballs on my desk, Hawke? 

See? Tedious.

You know what’s not tedious? The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not watching. His slow smile when I do turn to him with some transparent excuse to whisper in his gold-ringed ear. The way he presses back into my hand when I lean on him, warm and solid and _impossibly_ strong. First, his muscles have muscles but more importantly, he’s never flinched away from me, Kasei. Never. Every other Maker forsaken man in my life drew away the moment I stopped holding back, but not him. It almost feels like a challenge. Like he’s saying, show me what you’ve got, human. 

Well. He certainly got a show yesterday. 

…

“Ha! Another one for the dwarf. How many have you got, Hawke?”

Varric glanced back at her, cocky and grinning. Hawke watched his expression freeze under a Tal-Vashoth’s massive arm as it sliced down, the short, ugly blade angled to strike at the divot where his thick, hard shoulder met his thick, soft neck. Her fingers tingled with the memory of smooth skin, the light dusting of freckles and his scent, the costly aftershave, clean spice and citrus and below that, something she could only think of as _him,_ dry, sun-warmed stone, a hint of bitter ink. No rough bandit on the Coast was going to take that from her, especially not this honorless giant.

She blew a smoke grenade at the feet of the scout she’d been fighting and stepped into shadow to appear between Varric and the sword, her back flush against his, her crossed daggers catching the blade meant for his (perfect) neck. The Tal-Vashoth’s leader had height and brute strength on his side, and her muscles creaked with the effort of standing against him. She felt Varric stiffen against her, still frozen to the spot.

“Varric my love, my favorite dwarf,” she said through gritted teeth, “a little room?”

He shuddered against her shaking back and spun to face his assailant, an ugly scowl marring his normally handsome face. He sent three rapid-fire bolts into the Tal-Vashoth’s unguarded side as Hawke twisted from under his sword. The great grey warrior curled into the pain. Hawke followed through the twist, reversing her grip on a dagger to plunge it into his kidney. He roared and reached back, but she was gone. He whirled, clumsy with his wounds, and his next roar was a wet gargle as Hawke dove down on him to bury her other blade deep into his neck. He spun and she stayed on him, a tick, a burr, as his lifeblood arced red wings into the sand. He fell, and she fell with him. She rolled from his twitching form and stood, head down, breathing through the battle frenzy. _Stop now, Hawke, it's over. Stop._

Beth and Aveline had finished the others while she’d taken their leader on. Hawke wrinkled her nose at the iron stink of blood in the hot sand as she pulled her daggers from the grey body. His pockets yielded tools, soft cloths for their blades, oil for their leathers. She sank gratefully onto a low rock and began cleaning her steel. 

“Thought I was a goner for a moment there,” a gruff voice said above her.

“You nearly were,” she told the sand, avoiding those amber eyes. _He looked scared, angry… ugly,_ a small, unwelcome voice whispered. _How well do you know him, Hawke? Really?_

He sat beside her on the low stone. Her body leaned toward his as a matter of course, as a flower to the sun, as the seas to the moon. He didn’t move, neither toward her nor away. His leg was solid against hers, his arm a brace on her back, the fact of him a stone anchor in the chaos of her new life as a free woman. Beth and Aveline looted the bodies and chatted lightly. She cleaned her daggers and relaxed into him even as she wondered at it, this ease between them. She didn’t like being touched, not by her family, not by her fellow soldiers in Ferelden, not by anyone… except him.

“Never thought I’d see a human go toe to toe with a Tal’Vashoth like that,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. She grunted. He nudged her. “You must be part dwarf.”

She laughed. “Would you come calling if I said I was?”

“Me and half the Merchant Guild,” he said with a chuckle.

She stole a quick glance at him. He was watching her, those amber eyes that never missed a trick, his full lips tucked in a grin that promised the best kind of trouble. She returned to her shining daggers and willed the flush at her neck back down.

“Well, too bad for half the Guild, I’m all human.” _And too bad for me,_ she added silently.

His arm left her back. She flinched to catch her balance. She scowled at him and found his eyes had gone dark and thoughtful. He’d moved his arm to tuck the stubborn strand of dark hair behind her ear. Her scowl faded to a carefully neutral mask. His fingers trailed behind her ear, drawing shivers in their wake.

“Yeah. Too bad for them,” he murmured. 

He drew his hand away and she measured her breath, heart hammering in her chest as the air crackled between them. Did he feel that? Could he have any idea of what he did to her? Andraste’s _pink arse_ it wasn’t the least bit fair, the way his slightest touch could turn her to a shivering puddle of stupidity. 

She stood, quick and smooth as she flipped her daggers into their sheaths. A downward flick of her eyes measured the sudden distance between them, her nearly six foot frame towering over his seated form. 

It wasn’t enough. 

It was too much. 

Hawke tilted her head down the sandy path.

“Glory awaits,” she said.

He pushed heavily to his feet. “You need to get your eyes tested, Hawke. That’s not glory, it’s Kirkwall, and there’s no glory there. Believe me, I’ve checked.”

She waited until he was at her side to reply. “Mm,” she hummed, low in her chest. It had the desired effect. His shoulders tightened, barely, and he scowled up at her. “Maybe you just need a fresh perspective,” she said.

He sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you reach for glory and come away with your hands covered in shit.” 

“Varric,” she chuckled, “I’d hope a man of your considerable experience would understand the importance of proper hygiene when reaching for that sort of glory.”

“Oof. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” he said with a grin.

She bumped him with her hip. “Sorry. I’ll leave the low-hanging fruit for you next time.”

He bumped back. “Short jokes, Hawke?”

“Only when I’m out of sex jokes.”

He scoffed. “That’ll be the day.”

…

In hindsight, Varric was right about there being no glory in Kirkwall. We spent all day fighting lapsed qunari with sand in my smalls and all I got for my trouble was an audience with the grump in chief, sworn at by a truly lovely specimen of the dwarven people, and four measly sovereigns. I must have looked shockingly downtrodden about it all, because Varric all but begged me to join them for Grace after, and that, Kasei, is when things got interesting.

…

“Four serpents and the knight of roses!”

Hawke clawed at the pot, silver and copper shining in the firelight as it clinked toward her chest.

“What? There’s no way you have the knight of—” ‘Bela elbowed Varric in the side and made him slosh wine onto his cuff. “Sod it, Rivaini! Look what you’ve done.”

“Oops,” ‘Bela said, winking at Hawke. 

Hawke fluttered her lashes at Varric as he slapped the sour wine from his coat. “Oh tsk, counting cards, are we? Naughty naughty, Varric son of Varian.”

“At least I’m not hiding them in my bosom,” he shot back, scowling. “And Varian is a human name, you numpty.”

Hawke barked a laugh. “You wish I was hiding them in my bosom.”

“Where else are you supposed to hide them?” ‘Bela asked with a slow smile.

Hawke giggled as she stacked the coins into neat little towers. Varric’s elf friend Gallard raised a tattered eyebrow at ‘Bela and ran his tongue over the edge of his cards. ‘Bela grinned and raised her tankard as Varric slapped the moistened cards away with a disgusted grunt. 

“Bloody savages. This was my last good deck,” Varric groused as he shuffled.

“Please, it’s a tolerable deck at best,” ‘Bela said. “If it were a good deck, there’d be naked people on the backs.”

Hawke lifted a brow at her. “Where does one acquire such a deck, ‘Bela?”

‘Bela ran light fingertips down Hawke’s cheek. Hawke lowered her lashes and leaned into her touch, keenly aware of the effect they were having on Varric. He shifted in his seat and pretended to ignore them as he handed the cards to Gallard. The elf cut them absently, too interested in the Hawke and Isabela Show to slip a few up his sleeve, or watch as Varric slipped a few into his.

“I’d tell you, kitten,” ‘Bela purred, “but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Mm, surely just a small death, my pirate queen?” Hawke murmured, barely more than a moan. Varric’s ears flushed dark in the low light, and Hawke bit down on her victorious grin. She was _absolutely_ getting under his skin.

‘Bela laughed. “For you? At least three.”

Varric snapped the cards in his hand and dealt a new round. “Ante up, harlots. I have coin to win.”

They played a few more rounds, the other three whittling Hawke’s ill-gotten gains down to nearly nothing. She slapped her palm over her last small pile of coins when Varric finished raking his winnings from the table. She pointed at him, knitting her brow in accusal.

“I saved your life today, dwarf. You owe me.”

He shook his head, grinning. “You endangered it in the first place, human. I was perfectly content staying in my suite, counting my money until you barged in demanding I come to the blighted coast with you.”

“Pff,” she scoffed. “You were bored out of your thick skull. I could see your will to live fading before my very eyes. You weren’t even my first choice!” A lie. Of course he was her first choice. He was always her first choice. His brows raised in disbelief. “Oh no, I was going to ask Anders, but the clinic was busy and I couldn’t bear to take the people’s healer away in their time of need.

“I only dropped in to see if you had work for us on my way to pick up Beth, but the light in your eyes was guttering under the tedium of all those numbers. I couldn’t bear to leave you like that, so cold and alone with nothing but your money and your crossbow for company.”

“Hey. I’ll have you know that Bianca is excellent company.” He glanced back at the crossbow. “Aren’t you, baby?”

Hawke schooled her features into a boozy mask of disinterest even as her heart shriveled in her chest. She was still ferreting the details of that story out, tantalizing hints in his journal, under the breath mutterings whenever he passed through the dwarven square. Something devastating had happened between the dwarven houses a few years before she’d come to Kirkwall, and he’d been at the center of it. 

‘Bela groaned. “Yes yes, she’s magnificent, one of a kind, a real minx. Are you dealing another hand or no?”

Varric shook his head. “Find another game, Rivaini. I have business to discuss with Hawke.”

Hawke’s formerly shriveled heart grew ten sizes and was suddenly far, far too large for her bones. She yawned into her palm as she stood, flapping with the other hand at her tankard with a drunken looseness she no longer felt. Varric slid it from under her fingers with a knowing grin and tilted his head toward his rooms. She dropped a lazy curtsy to the table and turned to follow him.

“Use protection!” ‘Bela called brightly after them.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Gallard added.

“Ooh, what _wouldn’t_ you do?” ‘Bela asked, her voice quieting as she turned to him.

Hawke could hear her lips curl around the question. She and Varric shared a look and chuckled, shaking their heads. 

“Can Gallard handle her?” she asked as she walked up the stairs behind him. 

“Eh, he’s all bark and no bite.”

She followed slowly, enjoying the view. He was broad even for a dwarf, heavy with muscle from carrying that infernal crossbow everywhere, shooting it from the hip. His shoulders had a mild hunch and his legs bowed slightly, his thighs and calves overdeveloped, the lines of his body imperfect from his demands. On another it might have looked monstrous. On Varric it was just… Varric. Part of his effortless charm. He reached the top and glanced back at her, and for one fleeting moment he looked worried, almost as if he thought she wouldn’t be there when he turned around. The worry was chased by relief, nearly as fleeting, before he mastered his features and returned to the genuine, open affection she’d been so wary of in the first few weeks. 

What business did he have looking at her like that, she’d wondered, like he’d known her as a child and was proud of all she’d done? _Confidence man,_ her inner skeptic had whispered as he sauntered up to her that day in the square, twirling his bolt and returning her coin pouch. He’d been waiting for her, she knew that. He’d paid the thief he called Red to follow them, distract them so he could swoop in and be the hero. She hadn’t known that then, however, just as he didn’t know now that _she_ knew Red was a set up. Layers upon layers, two liars doing what they did best. She should have called it off when she found out, but that look he gave her, that raw, warm approval that slicked over her skin like sunlight… no one had ever looked at her like that before. She couldn’t walk away.

He closed the door behind her. She lowered herself into the warmest stone chair, its back heated by the fire Varric always kept burning. He unclipped Bianca and hung her on the wall, then shrugged out of his harness and duster before sitting at the head of his table. He leaned back, elbows on the arms, hands folded in his lap. She stretched her legs out toward him, crossing them at the ankles. She watched his eyes slide up the length of them, taking in the leather and linen, soft from hard use. She grinned like a cat in cream by the time his eyes finally met hers.

“Business, Varric? Feels like pleasure from here.”

His ears pinked. “Just wanted to check in,” he said, glancing into the fire and breaking the tension. “You were struggling for a bit there, but it seems like we’re back on track?”

“More than halfway there, last I checked,” she said. “Though you took me for a good five sovereigns tonight, you slick son of a nug.”

He waved her accusation away. “Our coin is all going to the same place eventually, Hawke. Whether it comes from you or from me, it’s all going to the same place.”

She sighed as the weight of the day started to drag on her. “Do you really think it’ll be worth it?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t be doing this at all if there wasn’t profit in it. My brother has some pretty squirrelly ideas about honor and family, but he’s never made a bad business decision in his life.”

“Mm,” she agreed.

She tucked her legs in as she folded her arms on the table to rest her head on them. The stone was rough and cool against her skin, soothing after the heat of the day. She inhaled deeply, held for a moment, then exhaled, willing all the doubts and crises and passing terrors she’d held that day to go with it. She sank deeper onto the table.

“Hawke.”

“Mm?”

“You are going to hate yourself in the morning if you sleep there.”

“Mm.”

He was quiet for a moment. She could feel his eyes on her, prickly, tingling, the tiny hairs at the back of her neck rising under his gaze.

“There’s a bed just a few steps that way.”

“Bed. Whassat,” she mumbled.

He hummed. “Right. They’re not standard with the destitute uncle package. That settles it.”

She heard him stand, heard his boots on the floor as he walked to her. She felt her daggers lift from her back and heard the dull scrape of metal on stone. He pulled the blades from her hip and from her boots, and carefully removed her belt of potions and grenades to hang it gingerly over his duster. Her body sang with anticipation but she schooled her breath to be slow and steady, lest she frighten him from this new and terrible path.

He coaxed her legs out from under her to pull her boots off and she curled her feet away from him, embarrassed. He tsked at her and pulled them back, and she cracked an eye to see him retrieve a rough cloth from a drawer and kneel before her. He took her foot onto his lap and wrapped it in the cloth, and when a sharp scent of rosemary reached her she realized he’d soaked it in oil. The cloth lifted the dirt and sweat from her skin, leaving it glowing and smelling of her mother’s herb garden in Lothering. She swallowed the lump in her throat as he took her other foot.

She watched through her lashes as he worked. He never looked up, but held her with all the presence and care as he did his crossbow. Her horrible demon mind ached to break the moment with a quip, a jab, anything to make him stop doing… this. She bit her tongue.

At last he let her go, only to get to his feet and offer his hand. She pawed at him loosely. He caught her with an amused scowl and yanked her up, catching her hip as she threatened to overshoot him. He spun her like a ballroom lead and lowered her gently to the bed when they got there. 

“Do you sleep in those?” he asked, looking at her leathers.

“Depends on who I’m sleeping with,” she said with a lazy grin.

“Oh no. I’m sleeping over there,” he said, tilting his head to his table.

She made to get up. “I’m not putting you out of your own bed, Varric. I can go home. I’m good.”

He pressed her back down. “You’re not going anywhere like this. I’ve spent plenty of nights in that chair. I’ll be fine.”

Hawke wanted to get up. She did. But Varric’s hands were weighted with stone and his bed was soft, the softest thing she’d felt in a lifetime, and his red cover was real velvet, and her fingers sank traitorously into the lush cloth. She was only vaguely aware of her laces being untied and her belts unbuckled, but after a minimum of shifting she folded her legs onto the bed, soft in her linens. He flicked the cover back and she laid down obediently, suddenly enveloped in his scent. She buried her face into the pillow and drew him deep into her lungs, sun-warmed stone, bitter ink, citrus trees and spices she knew only by name and her father’s fond description. 

“Goodnight, Hawke,” came his voice, low and amused.

“Mmph,” she replied, too full of him for words. 

…

And when I woke, Kasei, I found you waiting for me on his table next to a bowl of pig oat mash and a full carafe of strong black coffee. I opened you because you’re a journal, and was not disappointed when a small note slipped from your otherwise blank pages. 

_I told your family you stayed here last night, though I did leave out the part that you slept in my bed. No need to worry Leandra or make Sunshine jealous, right? This is for you. Stop reading mine._

_-V_

Silly dwarf. As much as I appreciate you, there’s only one thing that will make me stop reading his journal, and I don’t think he’s ready for that just yet. Lucky for us, I’m patient. 

Ah, I hear him coming up the stairs now. Until next time, Kasei my dear.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's play Spot the Prompt! This started as Flirting, but then it also became Acts of Devotion, Banter, Gifts, Mutual Pining, and Comfort After a Rough Day.
> 
> I'll be honest with y'all, this is the only way I'm going to fill these prompts in a month. I'm just a bitch who is doing my best. <3


	2. Sibling Rivalry

Dear Kasei,

Oh shit, I just dripped on you. Sorry! I’m soaking wet, and my heathen uncle doesn’t believe in things like clean linens, or clean anything, really, so Beth and I are doing our best to drip dry by his sad little fire. Beth isn’t speaking to me, Mother is sewing, and Gamlen is no doubt spending the silver I gave him for rent at the Rose. Oh right, Beth isn’t speaking to me. I may have gone a bit far teasing her about that mage today. You should have seen her though, Kasei! Andraste’s flaming knickers, she has no subtlety at all.

…

“Told you Varian is a human name,” Varric said as he inspected Bianca for new scratches.

“Yes yes, you’re very clever and we’re all humbled by the breadth of your knowledge,” Hawke replied, rolling the slaver’s body over with her toe.

Bethany leaned on the splintered wall with her arms crossed, alternately sulking at Hawke and ogling Anders. Hawke flicked her tongue between spread fingers at her when he wasn’t looking, and was flipped enthusiastically off for it. Hawke cackled and turned to Varric just in time to see him direct his attention elsewhere, rubbing his ears. She knelt to strip the slaver of his valuables with a grin, pulling a sweet little dagger from his belt and several gold coins beside. 

“I’m relieved you sent the boy to the Dalish,” Anders said. 

He glanced toward Bethany’s place on the wall, deliberately missing her. Hawke rolled her eyes. Ah yes, the old “I’m not undressing your sister with my eyes, I’m merely interested in the bloodstain next to her” trick. 

“I wasn’t about to give him to the Circle, and he’s far too young and cocky to be on his own yet. The Keeper will know how to help him,” Hawke said as she stood and brushed the grit from her leathers. She studied her weary companions. “Are we done here?”

“I was done this afternoon,” Varric groused. “I don’t know why you drag me out to the blighted coast so often. There’s sand in places I didn’t even know I had.”

“My sister would be delighted to help you with that _little_ problem,” Bethany said, cutting wicked eyes to Hawke.

“Tsk, there’s nothing little about it, Sunshine,” Varric said. He grinned as Bethany turned away, blushing up to her roots.

“Yeah, Beth.” Hawke inspected her new dagger and breathed through the rush of warmth in her belly. “What he said.”

“Well I think it’s been a worthy day,” Anders offered in his dreadfully serious tone. “We saved a young mage from the Circle and rid the world of another band of slavers. We should tell his mother the good news.”

They left the caves and squinted in the late afternoon sun. The days were getting shorter and colder, and both Hawkes shivered in the cool air. Anders stepped behind Bethany to drape his cloak over her shoulders. She hugged it to herself, dipping her nose to it for a conspicuous sniff. A stab of jealousy hit Hawke straight in the lungs even as she groaned inwardly at their unbelievable idiocy. Varric came to stand at her other side. Her arm was around his shoulders before she knew what it was doing, and his had come to rest heavily around her waist. She leaned into the heat radiating from him and felt the spear of petty ill-will melt in his warmth. They let the stark beauty of a red sunset on the sea wash over them. Well, most of them did.

“Mm,” Varric grunted. “Water. Sand. The crushing knowledge that all this nothing will still be here long after we’re dead. Can we go now?”

Hawke patted his shoulder and twisted reluctantly from his arm. They walked down the winding paths back to Kirkwall.

Telling the boy’s mother that she might never see her son again felt about as good as Hawke figured it would. The weather seemed to agree, for the moment they left the alienage the skies opened up in a truly fantastic downpour. 

“Maker’s chapped arse!” Hawke cried as she raced to a tattered awning. 

Varric, Bethany, and Anders all crowded in behind her, dripping and humid. They huddled together and watched the rain fall in sheets, jumping when the awning sagged and loosed an occasional fat drop on them. Hawke tried mightily not to notice Varric’s face barely an inch from her chest, and from the look on that face, he was doing the same and succeeding not at all. A horrible thought occurred to her. She moved closer to him under the pretense of studying their precarious shelter, grazing his cheek with her tightly bound breast. He closed his eyes with a shudder, but true to form, he didn’t move away. 

She let out a low _hm_ to sell the inspection and shifted her weight to return to their formerly almost tolerable distance. He shifted with her, motioning to the other two to come farther in out of the rain. Anders and Bethany squeezed next to the wall, Bethany blushing until she about glowed in the fading light, Anders breathing so hard his feathers ruffled with every breath. Varric snaked his arm around Hawke’s waist and pressed hard against her, taking full advantage of the tight space. She pressed back to measure his body on hers, the weight of his shoulder in her hand, the curve of his ass on her thigh, the dent of his hip just below hers. She stroked her little finger up his neck. He shivered and dug his fingers into her waist with a low hiss. _I know you want me,_ she thought fiercely, _what are you so afraid of, you foolish—_

The ancient awning sagged deeper and with only a creak of warning broke, dousing them in freezing water. They all yelped and jumped apart. Hawke started running again, giddy and cursing, and the others followed her to the Hanged Man. 

“Hawke!” the patrons shouted as she entered, and she jumped sopping wet atop a table to take a sweeping, sloshing bow. Tankards were raised and cheers cried, and Corff scowled as he pointed to the ground. 

“A round of your worst for all my friends!” Hawke said as she hopped off the table, “and a round of roast for us.” 

They tracked thin mud to their table by the fire as Norah brought their drinks. Varric passed by them on the way to his suite and grabbed his wine from her tray.

“What, too good for the likes of us?” Hawke asked him, hiding a pang of loss in her too-wide smile.

“Hardly,” he said over his shoulder. “But I have fresh, dry clothes just upstairs, and I don’t like you enough to suffer needlessly in solidarity.”

Bethany kicked Hawke under the table. Hawke stuck out her tongue and glanced at Anders, who had settled far closer to her sister than was necessary. 

“So Anders,” Hawke said, “How’s life in the sewer?” 

Beth tried to kick her again, but Hawke shifted her leg to deflect her sister’s attack. She hit Anders instead. He jumped and scooted away, confused. Bethany glared daggers at Hawke, who was focused entirely on their feathered friend.

“I, it’s fine? The clinic could use more blankets for the winter, and more cots. I could really use an assistant some days. There’s so much suffering, you know…” 

He kept talking. Hawke’s eyes glazed over. She glanced to her sister, clinging to every word. Her eyes rolled all the way to the back of her head.

“Blondie! What are you doing?” 

Varric swung his legs over the bench to sit next to Hawke, grotesquely clean and dry and Maker’s _breath_ smelling of leather and warm spice. Hawke bit back a moan as she breathed him in, and she forgot for just a moment how wretched her entire body felt after the day on the coast and being caught in the rain.

Anders furrowed his brow. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I knew you were ruthless, but I didn’t peg you for the type to murder in cold blood. Your soliloquizing is actually killing Hawke. Look at her!” Varric turned to her, all sparkling amber eyes and toothy grin. She did die then, just a bit. 

“She asked,” Anders muttered, insulted.

“Well I think it’s wonderful,” Beth said, taking his hand in hers. “I’d be honored to assist in your clinic when I can.”

Anders smiled sadly and clasped her hand with both of his. “You are generous, Bethany, but I could not ask it of you. Darktown is a dangerous place. I would never forgive myself if you came to harm because of me.”

Hawke groaned. “She’s not a child, Anders. She can take care of herself, believe me. Maker, I’d escort her there just so you could teach her your healing spells. Hers sting like the dickens.”

“You never complained when I—” 

Hawke kicked Bethany under the table. Both men watched the sisters Hawke warily, neither wanting to find out who’d win if fire and steel started flying. Bethany glared at her sister, but she did change the subject. 

“Anyway,” she said with a huff, “my staff is yours, Anders, if you’d have it.”

“That’s his line, sis,” Hawke said with a cackle.

Bethany and Anders both flushed beet red. Varric turned away with a snicker, and Hawke lifted her tankard to them, grinning evilly. Bethany pushed roughly up to leave, but Norah arrived with their meal before she could untangle herself from the table. The heavy scent of spitted meat and sweet roasted roots set everyone’s bellies to growling. Beth sank down under its alluring weight. 

“You are _awful,_ Hawke, and you are not forgiven,” she said as she stabbed a chunk of dripping roast from the plate.

Hawke shrugged and filled her plate with as much meat and veg as it could hold and set to as though she hadn’t eaten in a week. It wasn’t what anyone would call good, but it was hot and filling and far better than the sleep she usually had for supper. She felt Varric’s gaze on her as she ate, ever observant. She tried to take smaller bites.

Varric produced a deck of cards when they’d cleaned the platter and dealt a round of Grace. Anders nearly refused, but Varric insisted. 

“Just a friendly game while this storm howls itself out,” he said. “Copper only.”

They played hand after hand waiting for the night to clear. Hours passed, their clothes were stiff with dried rain and sand, and the storm showed no sign of weakening. Hawke pulled at her trousers and stretched her back, and she caught Varric’s sideward glance over her chest as she did. She let a soft moan slip from her throat. He shivered and looked away. Beth and Anders were huddled together, looking at each other’s hands and whispering hotly back and forth. 

“Beth,” she said, authority in her tone. Every head turned to her. A little thrill went down her spine. Yep, she still had it.

“What,” her sister snapped, glaring.

“It’s late. Mother’s probably worrying by now.”

“Maker’s breath, Hawke, it’s still a raging squall out there.”

“Which is all the more reason for her to worry, isn’t it?”

Anders hummed. “Your sister’s right, Bethany. You shouldn’t let your mother worry without reason.”

Bethany grumbled as she stood, leaning on Anders as she stepped over the bench. Hawke watched him as Beth turned to leave, and he deflated noticeably when her fingers trailed away. Bloody flames, they had it bad. Hawke shook her head. Much as she wanted to like Anders, his tendency to crackle blue and drop his voice two octaves made _liking_ very difficult indeed. Their father had trained both his girls from a young age to deal with demons either carefully or not at all, and here her idiot sister had fallen in love with one.

Hawke rose as well, brushing as close to Varric as she dared. She wished her father had imparted some wisdom when it came to impossible dwarves with sparkling eyes and perfect chest hair and… complicated, pasts. She walked to the door and gave him her lazy salute, committing to memory the way his shoulders bunched as he leaned his elbows on the table, the way his lips parted in a smile as he nodded to her. She turned, and the sisters Hawke ducked their heads and ran out into the storm.

…

Well Kasei, Beth has retired to her sad mattress on the floor and I’ve been dry for some time, yet here I still am, telling you my tales of woe. We’re meeting the dwarf early tomorrow, some rumor about templars disappearing, which means the Gallows, which means I absolutely will not be bringing my sister along. Which means… oh Maker. 

She’ll be at the clinic. Andraste preserve us all. 

Until next time, Kasei my dear. 

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the prompt! I for sure have Awkward but Cute and Caught in the Rain, and Flirting and Banter are just a given with these fools.
> 
> Possibly a bit angsty next time. Impossible to avoid completely with them, I'm afraid.


	3. Escape

Oh, Kasei.

Kasei it has been a day. It’s been three, actually. So much has happened, I hardly know where to begin. Well, first I’m not even in Kirkwall at the moment. Beth and I had to leave rather quickly, and Mother was exactly as pleased as you might expect. I am now part owner of a mine? And I have this strange gem from a Qunari mage who self-immolated right in front of me and it makes my hair stand completely on end but he said it would protect me so I’m bringing it on the expedition and oh Maker I’m not sure Mother will ever forgive me but the templars knew and we needed to leave that night and Varric did it. He got us out. 

~~If I wasn’t completely in love with him before,~~ I’m pretty sure I’m contractually obligated to dote on him for the rest of my life after that.

Well. I suppose I can begin at the beginning. Beth and I saved a Chantry sister from a gang of thugs. Or, we thought we did, until a lurking templar made his appearance. He wanted to take Beth to the Circle then and there, but the sister waved him off. Lucky for both of them too, because they would have died that night. Been a while since I spilled templar blood, but I certainly haven’t forgotten how. The sister asked for our help, we helped her, and she double-crossed us, neat like. The coin was good at least, nearly twice what I get for most jobs, and it put us over the buy-in for the expedition. The only problem, was we needed to skip town.

Varric walked us back to Gamlen’s. Beth slipped inside right away, too spooked about the templar to stay and chat, but I couldn’t bear to face Mother or that stinking hovel. I sat on the rise outside, and Varric took it as an invitation to sit with me. He sat right next to me, Kasei, close enough to touch. So I did.

…

The stone was cool on Hawke’s back, welcome after the rare warmth earlier that day. She rested her thigh on Varric’s, daring him to move away. He didn’t. She exhaled for what felt like the first time that day and relaxed into him, her soft, animal body curling around this small comfort he offered with his. Something cracked within her as they sat together reeking of smoke and death, and stupid tears pricked her eyes. She blinked one away. He reached up, slow, as though she were a wild horse and he a whisperer, and brushed it gently with his rough thumb. Sobs threatened to choke her at his tenderness. She swallowed them down.

“Can we leave tomorrow?” she asked, hating the waver in her voice.

“Tomorrow? No.” He shifted, no longer present, no longer gentle. Her chest caved with the loss as he went on “…and agreements to sign now that we’ve the gold for them. Even with the two of us that will take a full day. Another day to load the wagons and gather the hirelings—”

She slammed her head back against the wall. The shock of it careened through her skull and chased the weakness from her body. He stopped, startled from his businessman’s lament. 

“They know us now, Varric. They know. We need to _go._ ” 

He drifted inward, chastised and quiet. She measured her breath, controlling the prick of battle fury ignited by the new throbbing at the back of her head, but only just. She put her hand on the ground next to him and pressed the grit into her palm until it tingled. He shifted again. She closed her eyes, waiting for him to leave. He took her hand instead, coaxing it up. She opened her unbelieving eyes to see what lies her flesh told, but there was his hand, gloveless, their palms together between them. She flicked her eyes to meet his, a skeptical brow lifted in a question. He met her hard gaze with soft understanding.

“I can get you out of the city. Tonight. Take your sister and wait for me at Anders’ clinic.” 

The battle fury blossomed into white relief. She crushed his hand in hers and darted forward. She didn’t know she would kiss him until it was almost over. At the last moment she remembered to breathe, leather and stone, citrus and spice. She filled her lungs with him, filled her mind with the smooth, full press of his lips on hers, the alkaline taste, the acrid smoke. He flinched, his hand, her kiss, she didn’t know. She released him and fled to the putrid safety of her uncle’s hovel.

Where her mother waited for her.

“A templar, Hawke? You let your sister be discovered by a templar?” Leandra’s scowl was thunderous.

“Mother!” Beth shouted. “It wasn’t her fault! She didn’t know the templar was there any more than I did.”

Hawke’s mind raced. She’d kissed Varric. Not any friendly peck on the cheek, no simple swak to his hair. She’d pressed her lips against his and lingered, shared his breath, tasted his mouth. He’d been smoky, metallic, a shade sour? She brushed her fingers along her lips, a new ritual to preserve the memory of delicate flesh and hard teeth in the sallow lamplight.

“Saoirse Marian Hawke!” Leandra snapped, eyes ablaze. “Answer me!”

“It’s okay, Mother,” Hawke said, calm, detached. “Remember the expedition? V— the younger Tethras brother, my contact for all these recent jobs, he’s getting us out of town.” She turned to her sister. “Beth. We have to pack. We’re meeting him at the clinic. Tonight.”

“Absolutely not,” Leandra said. “I can see you wanting to do this, Hawke, but leave your little sister out of it.”

Bethany stood by Hawke. “I want to go, mother. It’s either the Circle or the darkspawn. At least I’m allowed to fight the darkspawn.”

“Curse that dwarf, filling your minds with nonsense! What happens if you don’t come back?” Leandra asked, eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t lose all my children to the Blight.”

Hawke rested her hands on her mother’s shoulders. “You won’t, Mom. I’ll do everything I can to keep her safe.”

Leandra wiped her eyes. “Swear to me, Saoirse. Swear you’ll bring my little girl home.”

“I swear, Mother.” She dropped her hands and turned to the bedroom they all shared. “We’ll be gone for several weeks. Pack anything you might miss.”

They packed light because they had little. Leandra clasped Bethany to her breast and wept over her a bit more. She took Hawke by the face and made her swear again, then crushed her to her bosom as well to give what little blessing her bruised heart could bear. The sisters Hawke set out for the clinic. 

Thick miasma hung over the old foundry, smoke from the day still heavy in the salty air. Bethany shivered as she passed through the jagged shadows. Hawke linked their arms together and strode forward with all the confidence she could muster. They descended into Darktown.

Hawke visited Tomwise for poisons and grenades, filling her belt and battered vial case. Darktown was quiet in this in-between hour, early for the night shift, late for the day. The ragged wretched huddled around low fires and shuffled their supper potatoes in the embers, coughing and scraping in the chokedamp that gathered in every still corner. Bethany lifted a threadbare kerchief to her nose as they walked through the worst of it. Hawke just walked faster. 

Anders jumped up from his rickety table when they passed through the clinic doors, obsequious in their unexpected presence. 

“Bethany! Hawke? What’s wrong, why aren’t you at home?”

Beth ran to him, the fragile scaffold of her resolve crumbling. She stumbled and he caught her. He held her and met Hawke’s cool gaze, and he trembled with the weight of being known.

“Beth outed herself to a templar,” Hawke said, falsely casual. “Varric is getting us out of town ahead of the expedition. He didn’t send a runner?” Anders shook his head. “He has a plan, said to meet him here.” She shrugged. “Mind if we crash?”

He steadied Beth. She turned to stand by his side, her arm around his waist, his at her shoulders. She studied the dusty floor.

“Of course not,” he said, “actually, it’s fortunate, that you should come. I’ve…we’ve, been meaning to ask you something.” Bethany twisted her fingers. Anders slipped his arm from her shoulders and clasped her hand in his. “Bethany and I, we…”

Hawke watched them squirm, a mean amusement thrilling through her. Oh, she was going to make him work for this. He cast about the clinic, looking for something to focus on that wasn’t his paramour’s older, wiser, deadlier sister. He came to rest on Bethany. Hawke rubbed her brow with a sigh.

Beth saved him. “What Anders is trying to say, is that we’ve spent a lot of time together lately, and, well, we… we—”

“We want your blessing,” Anders blurted, his cheeks bright red. “I would like very much to court your sister, Hawke, but it didn’t feel right to do so behind your back.”

Hawke barked a laugh. “My blessing? Beth is her own person; she doesn’t need my permission to live her life.”

Bethany shrugged, small and graceful. “He’s a bit old fashioned, but that’s what I like about him.”

“I know you don’t fully trust me, and I can hardly blame you. My intentions are honorable though, Hawke.” He gazed at her sister, soft, devoted. Hawke’s heart twisted in her chest. “I could never do anything to harm her.”

“Well, you could,” Hawke said with a cold smile, “but you wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.”

Bethany scowled at her. “Maker’s breath, Hawke. Honestly, you’re worse than Father ever was.”

Hawke flicked her fingers at them as she sat on the cleanest cot she could find. “You’ve been pining after each other for weeks. You want my blessing? You have it. But,” she pointed at them, switching her finger back and forth, “be careful. Mother’s raised enough mages for one lifetime.”

Beth opened her mouth to protest, but Anders spoke first. “There’s magic for that. I learned it in the Fereldan Circle once they saw my ability with healing. It toughens the shell of your seed, so the man’s issue can’t affect it.”

Bethany blushed to hear him speak so plainly, but Hawke was fascinated. “Armor? You’re talking about armoring my insides?”

Anders shrugged. “If you like.”

She laid down on the cot and rested her head on her arms. “Well get to it, doc.”

He stepped hesitantly toward her. Beth held him back. “Bloody flames, Hawke, think! What if you want children later?”

Anders shifted between them. “Any Circle will have healers who can reverse it if she does, my love. It’s simple magic.”

“You’ll teach it to me, then,” she said, eyes blazing.

Anders flinched. “Ah, it’s simple but… delicate.”

Beth pushed his shoulder. “What are you saying, Anders?”

His shoulders sagged. Hawke raised up on her elbows, loving every second. “I’m saying,” he said quietly, “that it’s… delicate, healing magic and you, your healing spells are, well they’re—”

“You’re a fire mage, Beth,” Hawke said as she undressed. “Your healing spells are based in fire and they fucking hurt, sometimes worse than the wound they’re mending. If I wanted my womb burned out of me, you’d be my first pick.” Bethany crossed her arms with a huff. “I don’t, though, so Anders, if you’d be so kind,” she laid back down and gestured to her exposed belly.

He gave Beth an apologetic look with his sad puppy eyes and crossed to Hawke. She watched his hands lift and glow, and she felt a cool pricking in her lower belly as he worked. He shook the glow from his fingers and dropped them to her. She jumped at the contact, warm and very unwelcome. Void take it, how _dare_ he. She hissed through clenched teeth and glared at him. Anders flinched back, wary.

“Sorry. I’m, sorry. Most women I did that for, they wanted—”

Hawke sat up and let her tunic fall to cover her marred skin. “I’m not them,” she said, shaking off the sudden desire to rip him limb from limb.

She got up and Bethany laid down, an uncertain cast to her delicate features. Anders parted her robe with such tender care that Hawke turned away, hunching her shoulders as the dampening shame of being made a voyeur smothered the red haze in her head. She wandered to the doors leading to Darktown to watch for Varric with a foolish hope that she might conjure him walking down those rickety stairs if she just wanted it badly enough. 

A muffled shout echoed through the halls. Hawke perked instantly, ears sharpened. Faint scuffling threaded its way to her, a clink of mail armor, the _zip-twang_ that set every nerve in her on fire. She pushed off the frame at a dead run, leapt down the first flight of stairs and took the next flight three at a time. Varric nearly barreled into her as she turned the corner, pursued by three dwarves in Carta armor. She caught his arm and felt him wince. A glance down showed a thin trail of blood at his feet. 

“Go!” she shouted, shoving him toward the clinic. 

She turned to his assailants without waiting for an answer. The dwarves came on unhindered, steel out. An assassin vanished in a puff of smoke, but two could play that game. She stepped into shadow. The mercs whirled, swords out and waiting. She left them as she searched for the assassin, no doubt still trailing Varric. He hadn’t gone to the clinic, the fool, but had merely retreated a handful of paces to line up a devastating shot on the remaining mercs. A blur at his shoulder revealed the assassin.

“Right!” she barked.

Varric rolled away as she dove onto the Carta dwarf. Her blades sank to the hilt in his thick neck and she twisted, feeling it snap beneath her assault. He was dead before he hit the ground. Varric peppered the swordsmen with bolts, dropping one before she could tear her blades from the dead man. The other rushed them, screaming a rough battle cry. Hawke threw a knife and cut it off at the source. He dropped his sword to scrabble at the leather hilt sprouting from his neck. Varric sent a bolt through his eye. He fell, and Varric slumped to his knees with a groan. Hawke clipped Bianca to his back and lifted them both on her shoulders despite his weak protest.

“Maker _take you_ for a fool, you impossible dwarf,” she said as she walked down the stairs. “When I tell you to go, _go._ ”

“‘S fine,” he mumbled, “mm had ‘em, right where I wanted ‘em.”

Hawke grunted, her muscles burning as she walked to Anders’ clinic. She focused on her own body to chase the incredible reality that she had one arm wrapped around his thick, hard thigh while the other held his ridiculously strapped arm steady. She didn’t shiver with a spike of arousal when he moaned softly, because it was pain, certainly, which had dragged that delicious sound from his throat. Her head didn’t spin with the mingled scent of fresh aftershave and fresh blood. She started up the stairs to the clinic on shaking legs. Andraste’s sacred tits, he had no right to be so heavy. Beth and Anders jumped apart as she staggered in, Anders running to take Varric from her back. They stripped him of his harness and duster and Hawke stopped to see the jagged tear in his silk tunic. Anders cursed under his breath as he laid him onto a cot.

“Easy on the chest hair, boys,” Varric said weakly.

“Hawke,” Anders snapped, “get him out of the shirt. I need to see how far that goes.”

Her mouth went dry as she knelt to the cot. She plucked the tacky silk from around the wound with an apologetic grimace and pulled, tearing the costly fabric like tissue. His stomach clenched as she did, and her cursed eyes lingered on the bunched muscle that rippled under red blood and darkened silk. _Focus, Hawke._ She forced her attention back to the flayed skin, the red and white viscera below. The wound was long but shallow, and she recognized the strike immediately.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” she murmured, “fangs is a finisher.”

Varric glanced down at her with a wan smile. “Had an appointment. Couldn’t leave… my best asset waiting.”

Hawke sniffed and shook her head. Varric opened his hand and she took it, willing her strength to flow into him. His breath hitched and he exhaled with another soft moan as he relaxed onto the cot. Anders knelt to inspect his patient. Varric closed his eyes. Hawke stood back to give them room and watched his chest rise and fall, her own chest twisting as Varric’s lips curled in a grimace. Bethany stood next to her as they watched Anders work.

“He’ll be fine, sis,” she murmured. Hawke nodded, distracted. “He’ll be fine, because you saved his sorry arse.” Beth nudged her. “Be sure to hold it over his head at every opportunity.” 

Hawke choked out a laugh and pulled Beth into a rough side hug. “I can hardly hold it any other way,” she said.

“I heard that,” Varric said as he sat up. He looked down at the freshly healed skin. “I’ll be a nug’s uncle. Nice job, Blondie.”

Anders rested on his heels, drained from healing Varric so soon after his work on the Hawkes. “I’d have been faster if you were anything but a dwarf. Your resistance to magic cuts both ways, unfortunately.”

Varric tried to get up, but nearly fell over at the first step. Anders steadied him and leaned him back onto the cot. Hawke dug through her bag, then sat near him to offer her waterskin. He took it and drank deeply while she shined an apple on her spare tunic. He corked the skin to hand it back and accepted the apple with a grumble when Hawke shoved it under his nose. 

“So what did your friends want, Varric?” Hawke asked.

“No idea,” he said between bites. “I asked, but all they said was ‘There he is,’ and ‘Die screaming.’ Typical Carta. They really need to work on their one-liners.”

“Are there more?” Beth asked, worried.

“More Carta? Always. More Carta out for my head? Doubtful. They never send more than a handful, and there’s a handful bleeding out in the hall.” 

Anders rocked to his feet and crossed to sit behind his desk. Varric finished the apple and pushed carefully off the cot. Hawke’s eyes followed him greedily, mapping the glide and bunch of the muscles on his back. He walked slowly to the door to chuck the apple core deep into the shadows of Darktown and turned to face them. A rush of heat prickled over her skin to see him so bare, the swell of his chest, the shelf at his hips, the subtle ripple down his belly, arms a marble statue would envy. Her fingers ached to run over the hard muscle and feel it slide under plump, yielding skin. He caught her staring and grinned at her.

“I’d be happy to sit for a painting, Hawke, if the coin was right.”

She grinned back, willing her fluttering heart to settle back into her chest. “You took every coin I had, dwarf, but I hear you like to trade in—” she paused to rake her darkened eyes over him. His grin wavered for the briefest moment and fierce victory surged through her. “Favors.”

She waited for Beth’s inevitable groan, but her sister was silent, laughter sparkling in her warm brown eyes. Varric composed himself with a quick shake of his head and dug a fresh tunic out of his pack. 

“We should get going,” he said, gruff. “Lost a lot of time along with all the blood. You have documents to sign, and I need to get you to the inn and myself back home before I’m missed.” He brushed at the wrinkles in his new tunic before giving up and tying his sash over it. “Blondie.” Anders groaned. “You’re coming with us, right?”

“Against my better judgment, yes,” he said.

“Perfect. Get your affairs in order over the next two days. You’re leaving with the expedition.” He turned to the sisters. “Hawke, Hawke,” Bethany grinned at the honorific. “Ready?

Hawke tilted her head to the exit. “Lead on, my trusty dwarf.”

Beth glanced back to Anders, but his head was down on his desk, his breathing shallow. Hawke linked their arms together and they left for the damp misery first of Darktown, then the damper, more miserable sewers, and at last they emerged in a sodden field, hacking in the newly fresh air. 

“Maferath’s balls,” Bethany muttered, “I’ll never be clean again.”

“Buck up, Sunshine,” Varric said, disgustingly cheerful for a man with greywater up to his knees, “it’s no worse than low tide at the docks, and I know for a fact you two and the Rivaini spend every Tuesday afternoon playing dice out there.”

“Yes, but there are handsome sailors to rob of their coin and trinkets at the docks, Varric,” Hawke said sourly. “Out here there’s naught but fallow fields and cow shit.”

“And the bath house is only the next section over,” Bethany added. “But this… where have you taken us, Varric?”

“Varric, Varric, Varric,” Varric mocked, crossing his arms. “I am taking you ladies to the finest inn outside of Kirkwall, and it’s just over that next rise. If my timing is right, and it’s always right, there’s a bath being drawn for each of us this very moment. We can sit in the dung and mud of this place and air our grievances with your clever and dashing hero’s methods, or we can carry on and enjoy the water while it's hot.”

Beth perked immediately at the mention of a bath. Hawke sighed and waved Varric on with a lazy, pompous hand. “Very well, clever and dashing hero. Take us to your lair.”

Varric dropped an elaborate bow and swept his arm in the direction he’d indicated before. Hawke strode by, playacting the royal, and dropped a favor into his outstretched hand. Half a fish, rotted and foul. She cackled when he cast it away from himself with a noise of disgust. 

“What is _wrong_ with you, Hawke? How long were you _carrying_ that?”

“I wasn’t carrying it. You were. Or it’s more accurate to say, Bianca was. It was caught in her bayonet sheath for a good half a league.” She turned back to him with a grin. “Might want to give her a little extra attention tonight.”

He grumbled and quickened his stride, overtaking her easily. They followed his hunched form across the field. The faint glow grew stronger as they approached the low hill, and Hawke felt her chest expanding with it. She wondered at the feeling briefly, but named it soon enough. Freedom. The sewer, the mud, the light through the trees, each step she took was one farther from Kirkwall and its bondage, farther from her mother and the burden of her relentless disappointment. 

They crested the hill and gazed on the inn laid before them, small and tidy compared with the tumbledown chaos of Kirkwall. The lush, heavy scent of onions in butter wafted to them and set each belly to growling despite their appalling state of affairs. Hawke could just make out the sign.

“The Four Songs? What is this, some kind of bard’s club?” Bethany asked.

“Pitiful bards if they only know four songs,” Hawke replied.

“It’s named for the cards,” Varric said as he started down the hill. “It was called the Blind Nug last time I was here, but the new owner won it in a game of Grace.”

“And they named it after the winning hand,” Hawke said. She whistled. “Luckiest hand I’ve ever heard. They say if it was fair?”

“No one could prove it wasn’t,” Varric said, “and believe me, the former owners tried.” He opened the door for them. “Best not to mention it inside, though.”

They dragged their muddy, fish-stinking bodies through the warm, pleasant tavern and earned a heavy scowl from the woman behind the bar. Varric stepped right up to the polished oak and slapped three grimy sovereigns onto it like a challenge.

“Sparrow,” he said, daring the woman to turn them away.

She tilted her head back toward the stairs. “Bath’s are drawn, but laundry’s extra.” 

Varric produced another sovereign. “Have your girl bring clean robes for the three of us, and hold three bowls of stew against our return.”

The woman nodded and swept the filthy gold under the bar.

…

Kasei, it was the best bath I’ve ever had. My clothes came off like a snake shedding skin, but when I stepped into that bronze tub and its steaming, rosemary scented water, every muscle in my body melted into warm, amber liquid. The girl who brought my clean robe lingered, and I asked if she could wash hair. She could, Kasei, oh, could she ever. Her fingers were small and strong, and she rolled my neck with such care… I didn’t have much coin left, but I made her take a silver for her trouble. I could have stayed in that bath for the rest of my life, but my stomach was trying to crawl through my throat with the thought of a hot bowl of stew, and parts farther south were spooled tight with the knowledge that the dwarf would be waiting for me.

…

Hawke descended the stairs, soft in her robe, light on her bare feet. Varric waited in the tavern already, a tankard of ale near his hand and a quill in the other, a sheaf of documents before him. She watched him for a moment, enthralled with the golden strands in his hair picked out in the low firelight, the generous lines of his broad shoulders in the robe. Hers was soft and lush, thick, pale cloth that trailed nearly to her ankles. His was so different as to make her question whether they were the same thing, thin black silk, sleeves that ended at his elbow, the chest open nearly to his navel. A shiver coursed through her as she wondered what the rest looked like. It was enough to make him look up. She stepped to the next stair before he did, before he could realize she’d been watching him.

“Ah, Hawke. I was beginning to worry that you’d drowned.”

She eased down across from him. “The dwarf flatters with one side of his mouth, and insults with the other,” she said lightly. He chuckled and swirled his drink. She jutted her chin to it. “How’s the ale?”

“Malty. Roasty. Bit sweet. Want a taste?” he asked, offering his tankard.

She took it, read the trail of foam clinging to its sides, and twisted it to taste where his lips had been. He watched, confused for only a moment. She sipped and found he was right. Malty, roasty, a bit sweet, but also something else, something that tasted of a stolen kiss under sallow lamplight. She hummed and returned it to him. He flicked his eyes to the rim and repeated her half twist. She waved to the barmaid for her own ale, and she turned back to him to see the tankard raised and his eyes closed in concentration. Her ankles crossed and uncrossed and her thighs pressed together, though she didn’t quite know whether it was to damp or stoke the stab of pleasure at her core.

“Maker,” she said, “this is what ale is supposed to be? I’d nearly forgotten.”

“Oh now, there’s something to be said for ale that puts hair on your chest. Look at what the ‘Man’s swill did for me!”

She scoffed. “You don’t drink that stuff. You always get the wine, which you also never drink.” His smile faded. “Ah,” she breathed, “the hunter becomes the hunted.”

He shifted, flitting his gaze to the fire. “I did, when I first came to live there. A bit too much, if you catch my meaning.”

She covered his hands. He flinched in surprise, but he let her stay. He searched her eyes. She hoped he found them soft. She didn’t do soft often enough to know if it was right. 

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Varric. Remember what we promised?” She nodded her thanks as the barmaid set a dripping tankard before her. She released his hands and raised it to him. “No true stories.”

He clicked his ale on hers. “No true stories.”

They both drank too long to that. Beth came down soon after, long hair wrapped in a cloth to keep the drips from her shoulders. The barmaid came round with another ale and three bowls of stew with a loaf of crusty brown bread alongside, and they fell to with a hunger, sighing and grateful. Varric produced the legally binding agreements when the bowls were cleared away. The Hawkes signed them all in triplicate, their signatures becoming fuzzier as the night went on. They might have stayed there 'til dawn, but the proprietress came from behind her bar to shoo them away. Beth went upstairs to their room, Varric to the stables to wake the groom, and Hawke, immovable, to see him off. He slipped into the kitchen to change back into his filthy traveling clothes. Hawke got an eyeful then, his retreating back, the black silk clinging to every curve and band of thick muscle from nape to knee. She went to the stable to wait for him, vibrating with desire. His smell preceded him through the door and quelled it, just a bit.

“Andraste’s flaming knickers, Varric, you’re going to need a new coat.”

He took the saddled horse from her while maintaining as much distance as he could. “Poppycock. Two hours, a bar of saddlesoap, a bottle of neatsfoot, and she’ll be good as new. Come on, Hawke, you can’t tell me you won’t be doing the same for your leathers tomorrow.”

She followed him into the yard. “Nope. I’m chucking the whole thing out and starting over. How do you feel about the skirted style? Remember the set I had this summer, that green thing?”

He laughed. “I understand that you were a freshly liberated woman without a sovereign to your name, but that armor was pitiful, Hawke. Never do that to yourself again. Or to me.”

He stopped suddenly and turned, nearly knocking her over. She caught her breath as he caught her, his arm at her waist, his face inches from her unbound breasts. He never glanced down, not even a flicker, but held her eyes as he set her back on her feet. He didn’t let go. Her hand went to his shoulder, to the join at his neck. She could feel his breath, unsteady as her legs, his arm, tight, pressing her to him. The sewer’s reek rolled off him but she was beyond it; all that mattered was his body on hers, her strength so easily matched, his eyes drawing hers down, down— 

“Your pack, messere!” the groom called, his footsteps breaking the spell. 

They stepped swiftly apart as the boy came round the near side of his horse. Hawke glared daggers at him, but the kid handed the pack off and jogged back to the stables, pleased with himself for a job well done. Varric shouldered his pack and turned to her, but the moment had fled. He cleared his throat.

“Three days at the most,” he said. “I’ll spread rumors about your sister’s daring escape and her happy new home far, far away from Kirkwall.”

Hawke nodded, tamping down the storm within. “We’ll look for you,” she said, her voice raspy from drink and desire.

He looked like he might say more, but he turned to lead the horse to a block instead. He swung his leg over the saddle like he was born to it, tipped his head to her, and trotted from the yard. Hawke watched until he turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

…

Maker take that idiot dwarf for a fool, leaving his pack in the stable! Argh! Simple, stupid, nothings, foiling all my best-laid plans. Uff. Breathe, Hawke. It’s the third day. He’ll be here any moment, yet here I am, tucked up in my room spilling my heart onto the parchment. I suppose I should go stir up some trouble to greet him. It’s the least I can do, really.

Until next time, Kasei my dear.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the prompt! First Kiss, yess! Also Heart Eyes, Holding Hands, Being Silly, Banter, Flirting, Mutual Pining, and an argument could be made for Long Walks, though not of the romantic variety.
> 
> I love these two. I absolutely love them. Le swoon, et le sigh.


	4. *The Perils of Wax-Based Aviation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this isn't all that fluffy. I mean, it has its moments, but the fluff/angst ratio really isn't following the prompt at this point. Strap in if you're still along for the ride!
> 
> CW: A smidgen of smut! It's Hawke's POV of The Four Songs, so it begins with the fart threat, and ends at "Measurements."

_The ink in the first part is smudged and spotted, written in haste and not allowed to set properly. The ink in the second is a different color, lighter and more considered._

Dear Kasei,

I’m gonna do it. I have to do it. I’ve been lying awake in this bed (Maker what a bed, I’d almost forgotten what they’re like) for half the night, chasing this thought like Dog chased his stub of a tail. Should I do it? I mean, no I really shouldn’t. 

I’m gonna, though. Since when has a bad idea’s badness ever stopped me?

See you on the other side,  
Hawke

——

Oh Kasei, you really should have talked me out of this one. I’ve fucked everything up. Void swallow me whole, he won’t even look at me now. He took a damn horse this morning before I’d even dressed, and his eyes have skipped over us all day. Beth and Anders are too swept into a world of their own making to notice. They even asked about him, asked if he’d drop by our camp on the hill. I couldn’t answer. They glowed too brightly to see my silence and poured a cup of whiskey against his arrival. He didn’t come. He didn’t come, because I pushed too hard. I always push too hard, Kasei. Always.

…

Bethany’s breathing slowed and deepened. The bed stilled beneath them, a soft, quiet foil to Hawke’s scattered, flailing mind. Varric was _right there,_ no more than ten strides down the hall. Their incessant flirting and pushing and testing had driven her nearly mad with desire. He was just on the other side of the wall. All she had to do was knock at his door. Such a simple thing, so small, but why? Why would she be knocking in the middle of the night? What possible falsehood would he not immediately recognize? She squeezed her eyes shut and pounded against the overwhelming urge to run to his door and confess everything.

It didn’t work.

Hawke slid from the bed and slipped out of their room using all her training to keep from waking her sister. She padded down the hall light on the balls of her socked feet and stopped at his door. Her ear pressed against the smooth wood, and she prickled all over with nerves to hear the soft, intermittent snoring behind it. She tapped her fingers on it gently. The snoring stopped with a muffled groan and she ducked her head away with a sudden grin, a sudden blossom of desire in her belly. She channeled her frayed nerves into rough estimation of haunted unease as she heard his soft footfalls approach.

“Varric,” she hissed. 

“Hawke?” He opened the door slowly, sleepy confusion in his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

She slipped in the moment it was wide enough to admit her and looked around the room, nearly twice as large as the one she and Beth shared. Her gaze came to rest on the bed, huge and low, and she stifled a grin as her idiot mind counted how many dwarves she could fit on the mattress. 

“Andraste’s pink arse, Varric, kept the good rooms for yourself, huh?”

He chuckled. “A man has his wants. So, what can I do for you, Hawke? Nightcap? Bedtime story?”

Shit. _Shit._ Show time, Hawke. Make it a good one. She curled in on herself, letting the strange, boiling shame she felt at intruding on his private space roll from her in waves.

“Ugh. I’m sorry, I really didn’t think this through. This is embarrassing. I’ll… I’ll go.” She turned to leave. 

“Wait.” He caught her wrist. 

She turned back to meet his darkened eyes, concern and desire mingling in their amber depths. They flitted from her face to her form, to his hand on her wrist, to her unbound breasts, back again. He was sleepy and unbalanced, and he didn’t know where to look. A shiver gripped her and she let it through, watched as it affected him to his core. He swallowed nervously.

“Really, what did you come here for?” he asked.

Hawke told a true story. A small one. The first she’d ever told him.

“Mm… my mom. When I have a bad dream, one of the really bad ones?” Her wrist burned in his hand. She pulled it back to grasp it with hers. “She, um… oh! Maker damn me for a coward! It’s only a bad dream.” She exhaled noisily, weary with the truth’s dead weight. “My mom, when I can’t shake the nightmare, she sits on my cot and rubs my back. Beth doesn’t know—”

Varric pried her hands apart to take them in his own. Maker’s breath, his hands were warm and strong and all she wanted was to melt into them, into him. She squeezed lightly, and he returned the gentle pressure.

“Sunshine is a mage, Hawke. She’s been trained all her life to dream carefully and resist what comes.” He stroked the back of her hands. “Was it the women?”

She swallowed. Conjured her most recent nightmare and flinched as the images roared back, details sharp and terror undimmed. Fuck, this was a horrible idea. She nodded, jerky with the paralysis of dreams. 

“Ninette. She found her hand and choked me with it. Her eyes… her eyes were gone, but they burned—” Hawke shuddered, stiff in his hands.

Hey, hey.” He squeezed again, holding her fingers until they stilled. “You don’t need to tell me if that makes it worse.”

She nodded, relieved. The memory clawed at the back of her mind, howling and black, but he turned to lead her to the bed and drew her back to the present, the bob of his stride, the shoulders built to carry the weight of his world. She wondered if there was a place for her on them.

Or at the very least, a place for her ankles.

She bit her cheek to keep the bubbling giggle trapped in her throat and the effort of it made him glance back to her. She turned her face from the hearth to veil it in shadow, praying he would read her tension as anything other than what it was. His gaze slid down her body like cool water. She reveled in it, opening herself to whatever he’d take of her. He turned away with a breath that shook at its bottom.

She folded herself down onto the bed and rolled away from him, not trusting her eyes to keep any of her secrets. The mattress dipped when he settled next to her and lanced a pang of desire straight through her belly, warm and aching. He pressed strong, sure fingers to her back. She nearly arched from the bed with her response, clenching her thighs against the flood. He hummed a soft negative. She felt herself lean into it, softening and wanting and pliant. His fingers moved on her then, skillfully releasing the tension she’d secreted there, and still more she’d forgotten. Her breath slowed to match his rhythm, and before she knew it, sleep wrapped her in its dark, soft embrace.

She woke with a start. Weak, watery light nosed timidly into the room from the strange window, and her back was resting on something solid and warm. Too warm. She lifted her head slowly. Ah. Varric’s back was tight against hers, their hair mingling sable and golden on their shared pillow. His breath was deep and even, catching quietly in his broken nose. She shifted on him in tiny increments, a slipped elbow, a rolled shoulder, a lift of her hips, until she cupped him fully in her long body. She pressed on him slowly, soft and steady as a curling vine, until they were flush against each other from breast to knee. She drew her arm over his chest and buried her nose in his hair to inhale greedily, her lips ghosting on his neck, her breath slipping down his skin. He would wake soon. She closed her eyes and stilled her body, utterly focused on this most delicate, most dangerous mission. Again she felt an alien softness rise to the surface of her skin, and she wondered where it had come from. Had it always been there? Was it something he drew from within her, mined from her with his warmth and his constancy? Perhaps he had crafted it from her armor, secret alchemy in his touch. She stretched each moment to its breaking point, willing the morning to last forever.

He stirred and lay still for a moment, no doubt as confused as she had been to wake to a warmth that was not his own. His back shifted against her, his hips pressing against hers as his hand drifted down, down. Aching desire flooded her and only the last remaining threads of her control kept her from rolling him then and there to claim his lips and spear herself on his morning-hard cock. Her breath hitched with the effort, and he froze.

He moved away, measured and careful, and she admitted with a grudging respect that if she hadn’t been awake, he certainly wouldn’t have woken her. She sighed lightly as he edged toward the precipice that would take him from her, and he stopped to look back. She sold the illusion with all she had, that in this unguarded moment she was peaceful, soft, something he could love. His breathing became labored, and she wondered at it. His hand slid across the linens until his palm rested on the back of her hand and his fingers twined between hers. She pulled them to her palm and memorized their pressure, their bones, the rough callus on her knuckles. She opened her eyes, slow and bleary, to burn the image into her mind. He looked at their hands with his brows knit in deep confusion, then he met her eyes. He let go with a start. He slid his hand along the sheets, rough and punishing. She clasped hers to her breast, tracing the ache he’d left behind.

“Got off easy if a bit of hand holding is all I did last night. Dog was the only one who didn’t mind my thrashing as a kid, but he’s been dead for, Maker, almost ten years now.”

Varric chuckled. “You could have led with that, Hawke. I’d have kicked you out with a clear conscience had I known how hard you use your bedmates.”

She shrugged to cover the sting of his theoretical rejection. “Secret’s out now. Don’t tell Anders, he’s my next mark.”

He snorted. “Sure that’s a bear you want to poke?” he asked.

Why did she say that. Why did she say that? She focused on him behind a mask of disinterest. His brow twitched, the corner of his mouth twinged down. Had his chin wobbled? Developments. Emotion. She pressed him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t see the way he looks at you?”

“Nooo,” her eyes narrowed before she could stop them. Anders only ever had eyes for Beth. Huge eyes and sad, like a refugee kid outside a Hightown candy shop. “But you have. How exactly does he look at me?”

Varric rolled away and threw an arm over his telltale face. “He looks at you like a man dying of thirst, meeting the queen of water nymphs.”

“Go on,” she said, willing herself to stillness. He was wrong. He’d gotten it so wrong. How? Why?

“He gazes after you like water reflecting the moon.” Each word tore from his throat, raw and bleeding.

“And?” He was jealous. He was jealous of Anders. Hawke bit her tongue to keep the avalanche of truth behind it.

“He looks at you like a beggar at the feast. Like a garden of crocuses greeting the spring sun.” Hawke plucked each word from the air and held it to her chest. They sounded like a promise he’d make, if only he could find a way.

“So, you’re saying he fancies me.”

He laughed, pressing his arm hard against his eyes. “Yes, Hawke, he fancies you quite a lot.” 

Someone certainly fancied her. She watched him breathe under the taut silence, counting his breaths as she did when the battle fury wouldn’t fade, when her heart was fit to fly from her chest. She waited for him to master himself once more. She was ruthless, but never let it be said that she was unkind.

“Double edged secrets, Tethras,” she said at last. “Surprising how much that one cost you.” He grunted. She hummed, giving him space. “I’ll keep my bear poker stowed. Thanks for the warning.”

“My pleasure.”

“It was, wasn’t it.”

He glared at her from under his arm. She gazed back, frank and forgiving. His glare softened into something right next door to fear and wonder, but he rolled from the bed before she could name it.

“I’ll have them start breakfast,” he said, pulling fresh trousers over his soft leggings. “Bartrand will be up and tearing into someone by now…”

He kept talking, the hardened businessman’s facade falling over the wounded and vulnerable dwarf. She sat up and stretched as his armor clicked into place, leaning into the weak sunlight, willing it to warm the empty ache where he should have been. He stopped talking, stopped moving, stopped breathing. She loosed her strained muscles and tilted her ear back to him. He scrabbled with his clothes, distracted. She made her move while he looked down, kneeling between him and the door. He threw his tangled laces into a simple knot and turned to leave. He flinched to see her below him, soft and supplicant. She watched his throat bob as he swallowed his surprise.

“I won’t forget this,” she said, her voice pitched low. “You may be a liar and an awful cheat at cards, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else with, well, with that. Last night.”

Varric stepped nearer. He towered over her, and she trembled with sweet, sharp desire in his shadow. He took her shoulder and brought her up to her knees, his pupils blown wide, his mouth tucked in a small grin. “See that you don’t,” he said gravely, “or I’ll tell ‘Bela you fart in your sleep.”

She squawked and slapped his chest with an open hand, laughing and furious. “A lady!” She slapped him again. “Never!” Pushed his shoulder. “Farts in her—” 

She drew back to slap him a third time. He caught her hands in his, halting her momentum completely. She had only the briefest moment to appreciate his brute strength because in the next his lips were on hers. She sank into him. Her hands melted from weapons to flesh. Her mouth filled with honey where before there’d been naught but daggers. He released her and her fingers flew to his chest, their traces loosed at last. He was solid under her touch, heavy and sure and warm and real. She slid through the thatch of thick hair, wiry and soft at once. His hands had buried themselves in her own hair, pressing her against him as he pressed kiss after kiss onto her lips, his stubble pricking rough on her delicate skin, his lips soft and hungry, confounding and enveloping.

It wasn’t enough. She flicked the tip of her tongue along the seam of his lips. He stiffened, unsure. She was anything but. She drew her tongue along him slowly, and he answered. Maker’s breath, where had he learned to kiss like that? She did her best to follow, a rough journeyman in the presence of a virtuoso. A low moan escaped his throat and quivered her thighs and she broke away, her mind too full and her body far, far too empty. She filled her hands with as much of him as she could hold as he nipped a line down her jaw. His mouth found her neck and brought him full against her, and she gasped. Her hands tightened on their own as her hips pressed into him, as her mind struggled through the haze of her arousal to measure the rise and fall of his. A breathless whine left her. He took it for a question and answered with friction, rolling his hips, denting her soft flesh. She dug her nails into his back needing more, needing everything.

He shifted back and she held tighter, desperate to sustain this impossible moment. He dove onto her lips and her mind spun again with his delicacy, his desire. His hand slid down, down and she trembled as it ghosted over her hip, down her ass. She lifted her knee to draw him closer and he replied with another thrust, his leg bent inside her thigh, his sex hard on hers, equal and opposite. She broke the kiss to cling to him as she turned to jelly. He caught her on his thigh and her hips rolled themselves, sparking a jagged shock of pleasure through her. He urged her on, his breath puffing through parted lips. She stiffened as the shock spiraled nearer to… no. No she wouldn’t, not here, not like this— 

He backed away with a groan, fumbling with his laces. She sank to her knees, boneless and bereft. She could see him now, all of him. Maker, he was beautiful. Hair down and soft across his face, forearms bunching with frustration, and the object of that frustration… a handbreadth tall and thicker than her wrist if the creases of his dampened trousers told true. She measured again, and again, mistrusting her eyes even as they repeated themselves. He grunted with mortal annoyance and looked up. She looked back in a daze. He fell from his.

“Hawke?” She made her eyes focus on his face. He grinned. “First time with a dwarf?”

She looked back down, entranced. “Are you all so… girthy?”

The subject of their suddenly awkward conversation wilted. He looked down, away. “It’s been a minute since I entered a cock measuring contest, but sure, circumference tends to be the greater of the two.”

“…two?”

“Measurements.”

She watched his pants deflate. “Ah.” She blinked. “Oh! Shit! Shit shit shit, I just ruined this, didn’t I. Ohh, shit!” She sat heavily back on her heels, face in her hands, a slap of ice water down her neck as the bubble of this unreality broke and the world came rushing back. “Varric,” muffled, “I’m a bad person.”

He knelt before her and coaxed her hands down. Her fingers trembled, but his were still. She searched his eyes for embers of the inferno they’d lit but he’d smothered it expertly, and nothing remained but damp, muddy ash. Something deep in her chest cracked. She didn’t let it show.

“Don’t be stupid, Hawke. You’re one of the best people I know. Anyway, you didn’t ruin anything I hadn’t already destroyed with these awful trousers.” She snorted. They _were_ awful, too precious and delicate for the hard use she’d given them. “Leave it to the Orlesians to find a way to fuck up taking your pants off.” She laughed at that, and she felt the world, unfair and cold as it was, resume its familiar shape. “Listen.” She looked up at him. “Listen, Hawke, I’m… I’m flattered, that you would even consider bumping uglies with me, but I’m really not in a good place…” 

Fuck. The old ‘It’s not you it’s me.’ Bright rage pricked at the base of her skull. It was always her. She was the only constant. She hadn’t expected it from him, though.

“True, true story.” She blinked. Truth? She watched, worried he might explode into flames. “I swear it, Hawke. I can’t give you what you want. I have—”

“Bianca,” she said, measuring her failure by the league. It was always Bianca.

“My crossbow?” he deflected. 

The world in all its cold injustice settled back around her, over her, its chill embrace flowing into the cracks newly rent in her armor. She’d become well-versed in field repairs over the years.

“I dropped by one day, but you weren’t there. One of her letters was on the table.” His eyes grew cold. She hadn’t intruded more than usual, though. She shook her head. “I didn’t read it. Just saw the signature. Recognized her writing from stamping on the Davri seed drills. Doesn’t take a genius, anyway. ‘There’s always Bianca… Bianca you minx, that was beautiful! Bianca sweetie, introduce yourself.’ Crossbow, letter, speech patterns.” She focused on him again, knowing the answer to her question before she spoke, resigned to it. “Do you love her?”

“Yes.” 

Ah, pain. Just when she thought herself invulnerable. “Does she love you?”

He looked away but she saw the anguish in his eyes, felt the twitching of his fingers. “As best she can.”

Hawke took her hands from his. “Well.” She studied them. “Thank the Maker for Orlesians and their stupid trousers.” 

She got up to leave. He scuttled around her as she turned, placing himself between her and the door just as she had done to him. The fury pricked again. What now? She had already let the idea of him, of _them,_ go, even after… whatever that was. She’d done it again. She’d pushed too hard and he’d faltered, as he must. As they all did, eventually. When would she learn? Never? She lifted her shoulders and dropped them with a huff, demanding an explanation.

“Are you… are we okay?” he asked, his voice so small she nearly didn’t recognize it.

Oh Maker’s chapped ass, this was priceless. She reached for a blade and found her tongue bristling with them. She found the newest, sharpest one and sank it into him, twisting as she went.

“Yeah. Just, forget I came by last night. None of this ever happened. I’ll climb Anders like a tree when we get back and we’ll live in my old family estate and have a houseful of little abominable blue babies in a couple years.”

He shrank in on himself, recoiling from her heel turn into cruelty. “I don’t think that’s how it wo—”

“Shut up, Varric.” Thank blessed Andraste, he shut up. “I blighting well know that’s not how it works, but maybe he won’t be so fucking presumptuous, as to _insinuate_ that he knows what I _want,_ better than I do.” 

The naked hurt on his face doused her righteous fury. Shit. She’d gone too far, and too far again. Hurting people was what she did best, after all. She left before she could make it worse.

…

I woke with the sun this morning. My bedroll was cold and damp with dew, and the fire had gone out sometime in the night. Beth and Anders were still abed, so I built the fire back in my own tedious way to make our coffee. The smell of it finally drew them out, rumpled and sore and positively ripe with sex. I couldn’t even be jealous though, Kasei. I left them to the fire and faced the sun with my eyes closed, willing its warmth into my bones, willing it to chase the horrid emptiness that had settled there since… well, since. 

He came by a bit later, no horse this time, just his boots in the dirt, his stride, his weight, the outside of his heel striking first and rolling softly to the front. He called out and his voice cracked me open again, just his voice in my ear, that’s all it took. I let my sister answer. I held the threads of myself with white knuckles and weak sunshine until he left.

At least it’s a big expedition. Lots of places to get lost for a while, lots of people to watch who aren’t him. They say time heals all wounds. We’ll have plenty of that in the coming weeks.

Until next time, Kasei.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the prompt! Snuggling and Pillow Talk, maybe a sprinkle of Holding Hands.


	5. Safe Words in Unsafe Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Overdose, brief suicide ideation. 
> 
> I'm bad at this fluff thing, y'all. There is fluff! There's comfort I swear! I just... there's too much other stuff they gotta go through to get there.

Dear Kasei,

I almost died today. The real kind, not the mental one or the small one or the one that gets me every time Varric catches me staring. I’d be a glaze-eyed corpse with shit in my pants right now if it weren’t for him. 

I did get to fight another dragon, though.

…

The dark called to her. It was cool there, soft and painless. Everything hurt, the bone snapped in her arm, the new rents in her skin, heart flailing blood on fire in her veins. The dark below the dragon was cool and inviting beyond the muffled sounds of battle and yelling, always yelling, he was loud for something so low to the ground. She drifted away from him for some damned peace— 

_CRACK_

She rolled into the pain. The whole side of her face wailed and hot blood sang with new fury. She glared. Light danced over his shoulder, fascinating. She watched it. He took her jaw into his hand. Her whole jaw, his hand, the glove, smooth leather. The light flickered, enticing, but her eyes were drawn to his. She lost herself in those dark depths. Amber, like good whiskey, like her mother’s second favorite drop earrings. They were black now, lost in shadow. It looked soft there, too.

“…did you _take?”_

His voice, rough with… something. Her tongue moved like an intruder, thick in her mouth.

“Ionno. Stam, fixit… armor. ‘Cause my arm.” 

She laughed weakly, then groaned. She’d laughed too much already, hysterics chasing her into the deep. She didn’t want to laugh anymore. He asked her something else. It sounded like something she’d heard before, something she’d seen but couldn’t place, so she nodded. Ice shattered above and the dragon roared down the shaft. Crystals splintered weak light to feathered rainbows and dazzled her eyes. Varric worked around her, solid and sure, his worry a living thing tethering her to this dusty belowdecks place as he lightened her body. She paid no particular attention to his care but let it wash over her like waves, like the cool dark just beyond them. The cool dark that waited just beyond everything. He hesitated. He began to tear.

“Stop!” Her hands flew to his through rushing water. They pulled with none of their strength. “Not that.”

He stopped, but he wouldn’t stop. “Help me,” he said.

She tried. The tunic pulled free of her belts but slid through her fingers like oil, like time. He replaced her ghost with his and tugged, and she wondered at how well he knew to undress the dead. Cold lanced her arm and she jumped away. Her meat didn’t. Her meat merely twitched, overwhelmed by too many signals conflicting, too many alarms blurry and burning. Cold was chased by sting and fire, more fire, muffled flames under black smoke. The sting was chased by more cold, cold… cool relief. Gloveless fingers stroked her neck and pressed, gentle and firm as her pulse jumped wildly below. She closed her eyes as blood quenched itself in his care, as her breath returned, as feathers fell from her eyes. He pressed his forehead on hers and slid his fingers to the back of her neck, his rough palm resting on her naked, telltale flesh. She settled back into her body, its weight, his breath in her lungs. She sniffed.

“You’ve done that before,” she murmured.

“You’re not the first merc to double dip,” he said. “Bet you were flying for about two minutes.”

She had flown. She’d known neither pain nor fear in the dragon’s jaws, only bloodlust and the red haze of imminent revenge. The beast had taken her arm. She took its eye. Neither had thought it a fair trade.

The dragon loosed a strangled bellow as the quiet shriek of bladed staves tore its body. Varric pushed away from her to sit on his heels. She wanted with everything to close the gap between them, to lean forward into those arms, to pull them around her and make a home of him so she could rest, truly rest, for once in her damned life. The weight of her body was unwilling. She prodded the leaden resistance in detached curiosity, only vaguely interested in her new immobility. Her fingers tingled with the return of sensation. She flexed them, then her wrists. Varric watched her, his face in shadow. She filled it with love and concern. Her chest twisted with a double hit of longing and lying to herself. The dragon loosed a final, shuddering breath, and was still. Varric leaned forward again and his face resolved out of shadow, grim and tired. He dressed her, his touch studied and sure as she lay against the pillar. He’d done this before, too, this gentle coaxing of decency onto lifeless, indecent flesh.

Anders and Beth called to them as he worked. He made some pithy reply, their blessed voices slipping over her like warm rain. Varric offered his hand. She took it, dubious. He pulled. She slumped forward, limp from the waist down. She pushed herself up in time to see a darkness flit through his eyes, cold and closed. He knelt to lay her over his shoulders and rose with a huff, quiet and stiff, a thousand miles away from her limp form draped on his back. She sighed, aching from her wounds, aching with his distance. He grunted in reply as he began walking to the lift.

“Beards of the ancestors, Hawke. How are you so heavy?”

A thaw. An opening. She flung herself through the only way she knew how.

“Some dwarf keeps buying me overcooked steaks.”

It was enough. He flinched with surprised laughter as he stepped onto the ancient lift, then sighed as she rolled from his back and hit the keystone to return them to the stinking, smoking hall. The light stung her eyes, too yellow and too bright. She closed them and opened her other senses, the distant throb of her body, the dry air in her lungs, the idle chatter of her friends, strong hands that lifted her, soft hands as they leaned her against another wall. Varric stepped away, how did she know? Anders came near, cool and removed, clinical in his regard. Ah, Varric’s hands on her ankles, he was still there. She breathed easier. 

“…so no more double dipping, Hawke.” 

Her name in his mouth. She opened her eyes to measure his presence. There. Full. Amber and red and gold, flames on his broad shoulders, warmth in his eyes. She swallowed thickly.

“Never again. It felt like…” What had it felt like? Thick and soft and giddy, a respite from pain, from the relentless press of expectation. “Like I fell in a vat of oil and feathers.” It had felt like she could slip willingly from the bonds of promises unkept and desires unspoken. Like she could pass into dust and they would understand. “Like I would choke on laughter and drown in misery.” Not really, but close enough for an audience.

Beth handed her a waterskin and she drank, the water tepid, hide-tasting and wonderful. Varric rested on the broken wall next to her and cut an apple, smooth red and green skin bursting to reveal white flesh, the sharp, sweet sting of juice. She watched his hands, fascinated. He held out a piece and she took it, fingers delicate on the edges to keep the white flesh unmarked with her filth. Sweetness flooded her, rain after the fire, love in desolation. She held the fruit in her mouth, lost in its perfection until he offered another, his hands uncovered, soot in the fine hair at his wrist, cheek full with the mundane business of moving on. He nudged it toward her as he chewed. She remembered her teeth and accepted the next piece, and the next.

Feeling returned slowly, a rush of pricking needles, an outflow of heat. Anders burned the rest of the poison from her body and eased the life down from her waist with his cool, knowing hands. Her bone mended with a crack, her reality and his joining together in a brief, blinding shot of pain followed by a tidal swell of relief. Varric held her shoulders as Anders worked, his arm a cage she pressed into willingly. 

Anders shook the glow from his hands and stood. He accepted another apple from Beth and they leaned on a broken column opposite to eat, studying her, studying the dwarf at her side. Varric hadn’t moved. His heavy arm laid across her shoulders, his eyes closed, his forehead resting in her hair. His breath was deep, forced into his lungs, a breath to chase what couldn’t be reconciled. She raised her hand and laced their fingers together, filling the dents he’d left that morning at the inn. He squeezed gently, marking her further.

“Don’t ever, _ever_ do that to me again,” he murmured.

She hummed. “Can’t promise,” she said, “but what if I swear to never do it without you?”

He huffed a laugh. “Impossible human.”

They stayed a while longer. Beth and Anders stripped the hall of what little they could use while Varric massaged the life back into Hawke’s legs. He stood and offered a hand when she’d mastered them again. She allowed herself to be pulled up and supported, his arm solid at her waist, her hand on his steady shoulder. Each step sent shocks up her legs and she trembled with it. Varric held her tighter. They passed through the corridor, her long legs matched to his stride, their bodies nestled on each other like stones in a drystack wall. Small fires burned along the jagged hallway and she observed the flickering light with cool dispassion. They couldn’t hurt her, not while he was there. The shock of her feet on stone lessened with each stride. She bobbled every few steps to keep him close.

The rough passage opened to yet another hall, this one twice as imposing as any they’d seen yet. Varric stiffened under her hand as he gazed on it. She measured its grandeur with a critical eye, looking for niches where archers could hide, scanning for traps an assassin might exploit. There were none. Whoever these people had been, they’d feared nothing. A chill ran down her spine. Varric’s fingers tightened at her waist. The chill pooled in her belly and boiled. They stepped into the hall.

He cocked an ear back a moment before she heard the snuffle and scrape of dragonlings. Beth heard them as well and faced the sound, exhausted. Hawke gripped Varric's shoulder, steeling herself. He stopped, throwing her off balance. She righted herself and they faced the tight bunch of oncoming dragons. Hawke’s chest twinged in sadness. They were newly hatched, stupid and hungry. Varric pulled a glass vial from his belt. He glanced up to her, knowing and apologetic. She shrugged. It was them or the dragonlings. He lobbed the grenade as they drew near. 

The dragons burst into flame and wailing, claws harsh on worn stone as they tried to flee the pursuing fire. Anders called weak lightning, barely more than static, as the hardier creatures tried to charge. It knocked them to the ground and they curled into the chemical flame.

They turned from the small, charred bodies and made for the center platform. Hawke stopped at the foot of the stairs, trembling with a bone deep exhaustion. Varric rolled his shoulder under her and stepped up, taking more of her weight. Step by step they climbed, sooty and sour from the miles they’d walked and battles they’d nearly lost. She sniffed. She’d give her little toe for a hot bath and a fresh change of clothes. She let herself slip into the vision, curling steam and soft linens, Varric’s bare chest beaded with shining drops of water, inches from her face as the weight of his arm drew a cloth down, down…

He stepped to the top of the platform and guided her to a low stone. She watched him walk to the massive double doors that opened onto a void. He moved like a man in a trance, his feet leaden on the dusty stone. He caressed the ancient runes, unlike anything she’d ever seen, and the spell broke.

“This is it,” he said as he turned back to them. “Sunshine and I will go back to tell Bartrand. Blondie, you stay with Hawke. She’s in no condition to walk that far, and you’re the best of us against the darkspawn. Here,” he gave Hawke his waterskin and the last grenade. “We’ll be back as soon as we can with everything we need for a proper camp.”

Hawke shook her head. “Your brother will want you stay—”

“Bartrand can die mad about it. We’ll be back soon.”

He turned from her with the finality of a ship leaving harbor. Bethany dropped a kiss to her filthy hair, then turned to kiss Anders with shameless abandon. Hawke groaned her best put-upon sister groan. Beth flipped her off behind her back as she followed Varric down the steps. Anders watched until they disappeared through the crack in the wall, then turned to her.

“They’ll be fine,” he said, his tone soothing and certain.

“Who’s worried?” Hawke asked, flip.

Anders huffed, amused. “You don’t have to put on a show for me, Hawke.” 

He sat beside her and rummaged through his pack. She watched, curious and doing her best not to show it. He pulled a handful of hard candies from a pocket and offered them up. She plucked one from his palm.

“Summer cherry. Huh.” She unwrapped it and studied the little red gem, clear and sparkling. He watched as she popped it into her mouth. “You’re not having one?” she asked. He shook his head and peered at her. “What?”

“You do trust me, at least a bit,” he said, satisfied.

“Should I not?” She flicked the candy, spreading its sticky sweetness around her thick, fuzzy tongue. The sharp cherry cut through the last of the sick haze in her mouth. “Good trick. Where’d you learn it?”

“I’ve been around,” he said. 

She waited for him to elaborate, but he was content to remain quiet. She whittled the candy down to a sharp point, then snapped it in her front teeth. The silence grew until it was thick enough to spread on toast.

“So,” she said, “you and my sister.”

He hummed. “She’s a remarkable woman. I never expected to fall in love. It’s forbidden in the Circle, pointless in the Wardens, and yet, here I am,” he sighed, “smitten.” He glanced at her, nudged her gently. “Like you.”

Hawke scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mmhm,” Anders said. “You were strong enough to walk on your own twenty paces into the corridor, but that would have meant letting go of the dwarf.”

She groaned. “Was it so obvious?”

“No,” he chuckled. “Not to him, anyway. He was far too taken with being your support to realize you didn’t need one.” He studied his nails. “He’s very fond of you.”

“Fond only goes so far.” 

She shivered. Was there a sudden chill in the air? Anders looked at her, concerned. 

“I should build a fire,” he said, “you’ve had quite a day.”

She watched him rise, looking as achy and tired as she felt. He puttered around the platform, gathering fallen timbers and stones. He handed her a dry chunk of timber. She shaved curls from it with her least favorite blade as he roved farther into the hall. He took her kindling and assembled the rough fire pit, lighting it with a careless flick of his fingers. Bright flame leapt from its center and licked over the hard, dry wood. Hawke’s eyes drooped with the sudden light and warmth. She edged closer, and closer again until the heat was nigh unbearable, and let it permeate her armor to soak into her skin and the hard-used flesh below. She eased herself down on to the broken rock and closed her eyes, blissful.

“Hawke, here, why don’t you—”

She threw an elbow at the nattering voice and was rewarded with an undignified squawk. Blessed silence settled over her like the heat rolling from their small fire. She slept.

Words echoed in the hall. She startled awake, a moment’s terror chased by Varric’s gruff voice. She soothed her body back down into an illusion of rest. Maker’s balls, she’d chosen a poor place for a bed. A stab of guilt ran through her; she really should have listened to Anders. 

The others joined her on the platform, setting and settling and scurrying about as they made camp. Bethany all but dragged Anders away, saying they needed water in a tone that betrayed her. Hawke stifled a groan. She really needed to teach her sister to lie better. Varric worked a bit longer before joining her at the fire. She prickled as he studied her, as though she could feel his frown on her skin. He shuffled back to her feet and began unlacing her boots. A frisson of excitement tingled down her neck. She cracked an eye open. 

“Wondered when you’d get around to undressing me with more than your eyes,” she said. He chuckled for a moment, until he pulled the boot away. He wrinkled his nose and though she could hardly blame him, it stung a bit. “Hey,” he looked up, “you don’t smell any better, serah.”

He shook his head with a smile and reached for the other foot. She let him care for her, tetchy as she was about such intentional, intimate contact. He peeled off her wet, threadbare socks and threw them from the platform, much to her dismay. She drew breath to scold him, but he turned back with a pair of his. He slipped them over her tired, aching feet and her eyelids fluttered in a deep, animal satisfaction, the embrace of fresh woolen socks a peculiar, extravagant pleasure she’d never known. She looked down and wiggled her toes, amused at how enormous the socks were on her. Her boots would never fit while she wore them. She’d just have to get new boots.

Varric stood and offered his hand. She let herself be hauled upright. He walked her to one of the bedrolls he’d set up, plush and new. She arched a brow. He tilted his head down to it, an invitation. She sat and pulled him down with her, looking him over with a critical eye. He had far too many clothes on. She ran her fingers over the thick leather straps of his harness, tracing the fine, even stitching at the sides and running her short nails over its silvered buckles. He unclipped the crossbow and set it to the side. She undressed him, her fingers pressing into the rich, soft leather as a small part of her mind wondered how much he’d paid for it. More than she’d ever seen in her life, no doubt. Her callused hands caught on the silk of his tunic. Her lips pursed, unreasonably upset that even her skin was too rough for him, her barest touch too coarse to suit his sensibilities.

He shrugged out of the duster, delivering his fine tunic from the rigors of her attention. She drew away, but he caught her hands. He undressed her then, gentle and present, frowning when her new cuirass creaked under his care. Heat pooled in her belly when he loosed the stays at her hips, even as her mind shouted from its haughty perch that none of it meant anything, it couldn’t mean anything, not while… she lifted and he pulled. Burnt leather cracked and tore. She swore under her breath, adding new breeches to the growing list of things she’d need to buy once the expedition caught up. He laid the ruined armor over the rest. She tucked her legs below her. They were soft now, whole and solid again after their sojourn to parts unknown earlier that day. He cocked his head, lips parted and tongue pressed behind his teeth with a question he didn’t want to ask. She favored him with a lopsided grin. He broke the suspense with a suck at his teeth, and asked.

“How’s your face?”

Of all the things she’d prepared an answer for, that wasn’t one of them.

“My face?” He swatted the air with a click of his tongue. _Oh._ She laughed. “My face is alive thanks to you,” she said. 

“You scared the shit out of me.” He looked away. “Still, it doesn’t feel great to smack a friend without agreeing on a safe word first.”

A safe word. She clamped down on the spike of arousal his offhand, off-color remark lanced through her core. He wasn’t serious. He wasn’t asking. He was making a joke, an application of solvent to thin the absolute reality that they were alone now, tired and vulnerable at the end of the longest day of her life. He wasn’t serious. She curled a finger on his chin, making him face her.

“Meadowbright.” 

He tilted his head, confused. Memories flicked by until she came to the place she’d chosen it, the field of flowers brighter than it had been even on that day, the farm boy’s ice blue eyes warmed by her fond regard. He’d been sweet and easy, willing to follow wherever she led, his presence the gilded edge of one perfect summer. She slammed the past aside before it could dim. She watched Varric and tucked the corner of her lips into a wicked grin. His eyes widened in sudden understanding. He hadn’t learned to be more careful with his innuendo around her, and as she watched his ears flush crimson, she hoped he never would.

“Meadowbright,” she repeated, “and just so we’re clear, you have permission to save my ass however you see fit.”

He laughed feebly and disconnected with a shake of his head. _That crazy Hawke, joking about nearly dying in my arms._ Well, that’s what she’d be thinking in his place. She rolled her shoulders, uncomfortable in her tacky skin. A large copper bowl caught her eye. She placed it by the fire, lifted the waterskins he and her sister had brought back, and set to work. Varric’s breath hitched when she pulled the tunic over her head. She glanced back to see him turning from her, unsettled. 

“Aw, look at you, suddenly beset by propriety,” she teased. “You’ve seen this already, Varric. No need to clutch pearls.”

He shook his head at her again, but he did relax. She washed slowly, taking pleasure in the play between cool water and hot, dry air. Varric replaced her water once, and she smiled in thanks. Nervous energy rolled off him and left ripples in the clear surface, and she wondered at it. He crossed to the other side of the fire and turned the spit. The fire leapt up to lick the chunks of meat, hissing as they wept fat and juice into the embers.

“Burning our supper?” she asked.

“Does your supper come any other way?” he replied.

She laughed. “I may eat the blackened beef at the ‘Man,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

He pulled a piece from the shank. She wrung out the filthy cloth to lay it near the fire and felt his eyes on her as she rose to pour the brown water over the side of the platform. It danced in the low light, a promise of release in the inevitable stream and fall, in the violence as it hit the stone below, a bright explosion of soot and blood. A shiver ran through her. Her demon mind should have forgotten these dark paths. Her father… he’d promised. 

_That was a long time ago,_ her mind whispered back, smiling with its bloody teeth. _A lot has happened since then._

She turned from the edge and knelt to dig fiercely through her pack. When she found a tunic she turned to see Varric watching her still, a piece of steaming meat held gingerly in his fingers. She pulled the tunic over her head and jutted her chin to him. He offered the morsel, glistening with fat and charred just along the edge. She took it and popped it into her mouth. A moan escaped her as she bit down. It was meltingly tender and flavorful, herbal and smoky and salty and quite possibly the best thing she’d ever tasted. Varric grinned at her. Her demon mind fled to its darkened slum.

“That good, Hawke?”

“Mm, where did you learn to cook like this? And why in Andraste’s name don’t you more often?”

“First, this hardly counts as cooking. Second, building open fires inside taverns is generally frowned upon.”

She scoffed. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“True, but where there’s no will…”

“Teach me, then,” she said.

He looked at her, skeptical. “I don’t know that you have the right… temperament.”

She laughed. He was right. “Okay, mother.” She refilled the bowl and found a new washing cloth. “You next?”

“If you’re offering.”

She dropped the cloth into the water and handed it to him, turning away once he’d accepted. She lost herself in the crackle of their small fire, the dance of its flames. Visions flitted within, the fall of dark water, the cascade of rainbows in a shaft of flickering light. Varric chuckled and she glanced back. She looked quickly away, her mind full of his broad, bare chest, her thighs shivering at the mere sight of his heavy shoulders, the delicate manipulation of her cloth as he swept it down his neck. She breathed through her desire, then she confronted it. She held her hand out for the bowl of black water and watched his form shift with the act of handing it over, marking the slide of muscle, the join of bone, saving the shape of him for later, when she was alone. 

She cast the water far into the room, filled the bowl with the last of her waterskin, and offered it to him. He didn’t take it. She drew it back to herself halfway, hoping and not daring to hope.

“Do you mind,” he patted the back of his neck. “I can’t really reach…”

Hope flew unleashed and giddy through her chest. She hid behind a wry grin. “What, all those muscles keep you from washing properly?”

“Not usually, but I left my brush at home.”

She knelt behind him, her eyes devouring the expanse of muscle and bone. It struck her as generous, welcoming and strange. 

“Maker,” she breathed. “No wonder you don’t need a stand for Bianca.” 

He chuckled. It shook his hair and lifted his shoulders. She harnessed every last shred of self-control to keep from sliding her bare fingers down his freckled skin and tracing those hard lines with her mouth.

“Yeah. She’s not really built to shoot from the hip, but my stubborn ass does it anyway.”

Hawke lifted the cloth from the water and wrung it out. She lifted his dark golden hair to start at his neck, thick and corded as the rest of him, black with dragon soot. He was tight in all the wrong places. She mapped them with a soft touch, remembering the names she’d learned as a raw apprentice. Trapezius, latissimus dorsi, teres major and minor. She pressed harder, following their outlines, soothing the tension he held there. She worked him slowly, savoring this rare sufferance she’d been granted. His breathing deepened, hitching when she discovered a new knot, releasing with a low rumble when her fingers melted it away. 

Her hands began to cramp when she reached the lowest edge of his ribs and she cursed them for traitors, better suited to rending muscle than healing it. She passed them down his back one last time, pushing her luck to the very edge. He rolled into them, wanting more. She had no more to give. She pressed her lips to his shoulder. He flinched and looked back, but she was gone, standing at the precipice of their camp to look over the ancient hall. She couldn’t be near him anymore. Every nerve in her body cried out for him; every breath spiked with his scent of warm stone and soft leather opened a deeper desire at her core until she ached with it. She hugged herself tight and stared into the hall, willing her whirling head to slow and steady, willing her flailing heart to silence. She took a deep breath and held it, held it to the point of collapse, denying her flesh as she had been denied. Her heart, defeated, slowed to its placid depths. She released and drew in forgiveness with the next breath. A cascade of tiny shivers fell down her skin. She looked down to the dwarf at her side, and smiled.

“Ah, there was a dwarf under all that soot,” she said.

…

And that, Kasei, is why you should never bring a pair of rogues and mages to a dragon fight. I’d have given my left tit for a warrior, any warrior, but alas, we had only ourselves. We’re going in tomorrow. The abandoned thaig. It hardly seems real. I mean, even tomorrow doesn’t seem real. What is ‘tomorrow’ when there’s no night or day? Is it the time that happens after each sleep? Does my earlier nap mean I’m now a day ahead of the others? Saoirse Hawke, woman of the future! I rather like the sound of that. 

Well, it should be a grand adventure. I’ll tell you all about it next time, Kasei.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the prompt! Long Walks, Comfort After a Rough Day, a dash of Cooking Together, and as always, a healthy measure of Mutual Pining.


	6. A Rogue Moves to Hightown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy March! 
> 
> This is a bit different in tone, a bit darker, a bit angstier. Had to be done. I'll still be filling the fluff prompts, though by now there will be a lot of repeats since a few of them need an established relationship and oh boy, these two idiots aren't even close. We'll get to all of them eventually!

_There are several blank pages between the last entry and this. The ink is different than the rest, richer and darker._

Dear Kasei,

Out of everything we lost in the Deep Roads, I least expected to find you again. To be honest, I barely thought of you at all after Varric’s horrible brother locked us into that blighted place. He told me to write about it… I’ve saved some pages but I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to go back. Hawkes don’t go back, we go on. That’s what Father always said when we had to leave town, anyway. I suppose I should jot down the main events, for posterity.

First, Bartrand locked us in the thaig to die, but we didn’t die. We fought a bunch of angry rocks, then an angry mountain. After all that, we found a cursed staff that Varric threw away. We escaped the thaig, lost Beth to the Wardens, Varric and I almost fucked at the inn but we didn’t fuck, and then we returned to Kirkwall. 

Yep, that about covers everything. Mother is still upset with me for losing my sister, which isn’t entirely fair. I mean, I promised to keep her safe, and she is! I suppose you could make the argument that I swore to bring her home, but no one said it had to be _this_ home. 

…

Gamlen’s hovel was still a hovel. Hawke wrinkled her nose at the sour cabbage stink that permeated every worm-eaten board of the place. Leandra turned from the fire, and her prim bearing melted when she saw her daughter hesitating on the threshold. She ran to Hawke at the door to wrap her in a fierce embrace, dashing the meat pie she held to the ground. So much for their supper.

“Saoirse! You made it! But…” She took Hawke by the shoulders and stepped back. Her tired eyes darted behind them. “Bethy?” They settled on Hawke, narrowing. “Where is your sister?”

Hawke looked away with a small shake of her head. Watching the hope whiff out of her mother’s eyes would have shattered the walls she’d built around her sister’s sudden absence, and she needed to be strong. For them. Leandra shook her slightly, demanding the attention Hawke couldn’t give.

“Where is she, Hawke? Is she coming back? Is she—”

“I don’t know, Mother,” Hawke said flatly. “I did all I could. It’s in the Maker’s hands now. Take it up with him.”

Leandra took Hawke’s face in her hands. Hawke met her grey eyes, defeated. “What does that _mean?”_

“She caught the Blight. We found Grey Wardens who agreed to take her on as an initiate. If she survives whatever they do to become whatever they are, she’ll be a Warden for the rest of her life.” Leandra released Hawke’s shoulders, her delicate fingers frozen in claws of shock. Hawke looked away again. “It was either that, or kill her myself.”

“Is… is she ever coming back?”

Hawke stared over her mother’s shoulder into Gamlen’s sickly fire. Would she ever see her sister again? Would Bethany even survive her initiation? She’d spent the last who knew how many waking hours deliberately not thinking about any of it. 

“I don’t know,” Hawke murmured.

Leandra’s knees gave out. Hawke watched her fall. She knelt beside her mother when the guilt clawed into her, and she placed an absent hand on her mother’s back as she wept for her sister. The beautiful one, the graceful one. The favorite. 

“You said,” between hiccuping sobs, “you said you would pro-protect her.”

“I did everything I could, Mother. I promised to do everything I could, and I did.” Hawke closed her eyes. Beth was waiting for her, charred from the red wraith’s fury, veins dark with Blight. She blinked her away. “She’ll survive. She’s strong. You raised her that way, you and Father. She chose the Wardens, even knowing what that meant. Do you know what she said?”

Leandra sniffed and looked up, eyes red with grief. “What?” she choked.

“She said, if it’s a choice between fighting death and waiting for it—”

“We fight.” Leandra huffed what might have been a laugh. “She had more of her father in her than I thought.”

Hawke sighed. Of course Father was to blame, long dead and likely rolling in his grave. She stood and offered her hand. Leandra accepted, allowing herself to be pulled upright. She dabbed at her eyes with her last whole kerchief. Hawke pulled the heavy purse from her pack.

“Here,” she held it out. Leandra nearly dropped it, surprised by the weight. “This should get you a real counselor and an audience with the Viscount. And Maker’s breath, let’s rent a proper room. No one honest will represent you while you stink of cabbage and poverty, no matter how much gold is in that purse.”

“Oi!” 

Gamlen returned to the living at the mention of gold. Hawke rolled her eyes and fixed him with a withering glare.

“You owe me! Bleedin’ templars busted up my stuff the morning after you left. Turned all my furnishings into matchsticks!”

“Bold of you to call empty kegs and a three-legged table furnishings, Uncle,” Hawke said.

“They may have been poor, but they were mine! And now I got nothing, no table, no kegs! Here,” he shoved a grimy scrap of parchment into her hands. “That’s the bill.”

Hawke looked at the sum at the bottom and scoffed. “I’d love to settle up, but I haven’t any small coins at the moment.” Gamlen’s stupid mouth dropped open to reply. She cut him off by turning to her mother. “Well?”

Leandra clutched her kerchief a bit tighter. Hawke tilted her head to the door, very much wanting to be away from Gamlen and his lame excuses and lazy schemes. Her mother turned to the bedroom they’d all shared. Hawke stopped her. 

“Whatever it is, Mother, I’ll get better.”

Leandra pulled her arm from Hawke’s grasp. “Your father’s rings are irreplaceable,” she said stiffly.

Hawke let her go. Rings in hand, Leandra allowed herself to be shepherded through the door and around the ruins of the pie. Gamlen waved them off, overly enthusiastic in his dismissal. Hawke was surprised. She didn’t think he cared.

They went to an inn just around the corner from the Keep. Leandra fluttered about, lost in memories of balls and luncheons when she was a girl, the weight of Beth’s loss apparently lightened with the return to the grandeur of her former life. She greeted the innkeep by name, someone’s daughter or younger sister. The woman seemed about as pleased to be remembered in pigtails as one might expect, but Leandra didn’t mark the brittleness of her smile as she swept the brass key from her hand. Hawke followed her up the stairs to the suite, drawing a familiar solitude around herself like armor. Her mother opened the door and sighed dramatically over brocade curtains and velvet sheets. Hawke shuffled her feet.

“Saoirse dear, could you send for a stationery set? And their pheasant supper?” Leandra turned to her. Hawke drew back, brows furrowed. Leandra tilted her head, looking at her one remaining child for the first time since they set foot in the place. “You are staying…?”

Was she? The room’s heavy fabric teased the mind as its cut glass dazzled. Her mother looked at her with smiling eyes, their reflections gaudy with oil lamps and golden tassels. 

“I need to meet up with the dwarf,” Hawke said. “We have some… unfinished business. With the thaig. Could take all night, so…”

Leandra frowned. Hawke left before her nerve did. She slipped through the shadows of Hightown, wary of the new gangs that prowled its darkened streets. She soon found herself wrapped in the familiar sour ale stink of the Hanged Man, her usual slant-shouldered gait traded for something more slumped, more hopeless, more like the rest of the people drinking that night. Edwina caught her eye with a tilt of her chin. Hawke shook her head and stepped behind a patron, then she stepped into shadow. She waited for her friend to move on, watching until a sharp yell made Edwina whirl about. 

Hawke used the distraction to slip up the stairs and knock on Varric’s door. She pleaded with all the tiny gods for him to answer quickly. Edwina wouldn’t stay distracted for long, and much as she loved the hardened older woman, her tenuous control was already fracturing. She needed to be somewhere safe. She bored holes into the door, willing him to be there, willing the latch to lift, the hinges to creak…

“Hawke?” 

Varric regarded her, worry in his handsome face. She brushed by him to curl up in her favorite chair, the warm one by his hearth. He closed the door with a solid, reassuring click and returned to his own chair behind a stack of parchment nearly as tall as he was.

“Hey…” Varric started, at a rare loss for words.

His gaze washed over her, and she felt him reading every poorly hidden secret. Her instincts screamed for a distraction.

“Don’t suppose you have any of that dragon ale hidden away?”

“Dragon…” he blinked, frowning, “the Nevarran?” Distraction achieved. She nodded. “I’m afraid that would be at the Tethras estate. Pint of bitter from downstairs?”

She sighed. It had been a long shot. “Does it get you drunk?”

“I’ll grab a pitcher.” 

He left the door cracked open. She closed it. Even a sliver of life’s noisy, insensitive insistence on going on without her was too much for her frayed nerves. The stack of cheap parchment exhaled musty odors and whispered promises that the secrets inside might be enough to calm her troubled mind. She flipped through a few at the top, but the bland reports of rising gangs and docking ships did nothing to pull her from the fog. She replaced them carefully and stared into the fire until Varric returned. 

He glanced at her, then started filing the reports away. Edwina opened the door as he slipped the last few into a drawer. She set her tray down with a tiny bobble, and Hawke wondered yet again how she must look to the people who knew her best. Worse than Andraste after the fire, if the clenched jaws and furrowed brows were any indication. Edwina rested a strong hand on her shoulder. Hawke leaned into the thick forearm, surprised at the contact, more so at her willingness to accept it. Edwina let go with a soft pat and closed the door as she left.

Varric poured the ale and set half the pie in front of her. The domestic normalcy of his gesture broke through the haze, just a bit. 

“We split the pie,” she said, unreasonably touched.

“We split the pie,” he agreed, watching her.

They ate, then they talked. She drank quickly, greedy for the ale’s fog to eclipse the one she’d been lost in since their return. They flirted easily, falling into their old habits. She lied to him when he asked about her mother. She didn’t even really know why. 

Varric cut her off when she grabbed for her tankard and missed. She let him take her to his bed, low and soft. Sweetness flooded her as he removed her armor, the laces and buckles well tended in his sober hands. He teased their conversation out, a silver thread in the thick spin of ale and carefully guarded mourning she’d crafted for herself. She could fall apart later. Varric tossed the last of her armor atop the rest and laid down beside her. She curled around his solid heat, taking full advantage of his offered hospitality and then some. He felt so good beneath her, beside her, the swell of muscle, the soft hair under her fingers. It couldn’t last, but damned if she wouldn’t enjoy the moment. 

His fingers threaded through her hair to leave a tingling wake down her scalp. He shook the strands from them and did it again, and again. Much as she wanted to lay awake while he stroked her hair, sleep came quickly for her. If she dreamed at all that night, she didn’t remember.

Hawke woke to the sound of a stool being dragged along the tavern’s pitted floor. She’d nestled deeper into Varric’s arm in the night, her head on his shoulder, his hand splayed on her back. His scent enveloped her, different, clean and unadorned. The usual hint of warm stone beneath his costly aftershave and rich leather had grown in the night. It conjured her childhood, a long day of walking, a nap propped against rough sandstone that had baked in the summer sun. She breathed him in, reminded of the differences between them, finding she didn’t care in the least. He was a dwarf. He smelled like the stone his people had come from. 

Her fingers traced the rise and knit of muscle banding his chest. He stirred after a moment, a short, sharp breath, a grumbling exhale. She froze. 

“Leave off, B,” he murmured, still mostly asleep.

B. Bianca. 

A pit opened beneath Hawke and she plummeted into its icy, crushing depths. She lifted her hand, not daring to breathe, and he sank back into his dreamless slumber. She left his side by slow, painful degrees. He didn’t stir again as she rolled to a crouch at the side of his bed, not even when she dropped a gauntlet as she pulled the other on. Daggers sheathed, she stole one final, lingering glance at him at the door, his hair loose on the pillow, the thick arm crooked around her absence. No, not her absence, _her_ absence. 

Hawke slipped through the door and locked it behind her, picks trembling in her unsteady fingers. She swore softly under her breath at them, and at her fantastic stupidity. She really should have known.

…

And that, Kasei, was the opening salvo to a truly impressive pity party. Mother enlisted me in her battle with the Viscount’s people which lifted the clouds for a bit, but once the estate was ours and aired, I didn’t leave unless I was under duress. Bodahn and his son moved in soon after we did, insisting that I was in need of a steward. I wasn’t, but I was in desperate need of a friendly face and his is likely the friendliest in all of Kirkwall. We spent several quiet afternoons talking about his past. Well, he talked and poured wine while I listened and drank wine. Maker, that man has better stories than Varric. Ooh, I should not tell him that. Unless I absolutely should…

Beth wrote after several weeks which was lovely, but even news of her survival only did so much. Mother insisted that I accompany her to markets and dressmakers, luncheons and Chantry services, but I was never really there. Sleep was elusive, my appetite fitful. My Ferelden rose oils ran dry at last, and Mother insisted I try something Kirkwallan instead. I chose lilac, like the tree in our small yard. She approved, which was rare enough that I may have accepted an invitation to a ball while caught up in the strange lightness of her favor. 

Naturally I was soon removed, for I made an absolute disaster of the Selbrech’s dance and was treated to an extended lament of how I would never be a proper noble, and how much she wished her Bethy were here to show me how it was done. The impression I made did have one amusing result. A prim prat of a knight in shining armor knocked on our door the next morning. He introduced himself as Prince Humsywhatsit and Mother fell all over herself to invite him in. _He asked for you,_ she said as I stood in my door, unwashed, sour with sleep and naked but for a half-tied robe. I closed the door and listened through the heavy wood as she fumbled her excuses and asked him to call again later.

Kasei. She pulled me from my room, cinched me into a dress like a packhorse, and marched me back to the dressmaker to purchase “a gown fit for royalty.” The damask skirt is hideous, the cloth of gold bodice screamingly gaudy, and I can hardly breathe in the damn thing. We met with Prince Whofuckincares at some fancy cafe and Maker’s balls, you should have seen the look on his face. _My lady, I have heard much of your skill in battle, but why was I not told you were so fair to look on as well? Blessed Andraste herself was never so blah blah hork hurgh._

Gross. 

Mother did most of the talking while I spent all of luncheon doing my best impression of a woman who is absolutely not about to faint into the food she ordered and then couldn’t eat. I would have laughed when the social niceties were finally exhausted and he was able to state plainly why he’d called, but laughing was right out along with breathing and slouching. Turned out I could have worn my leathers and made a better sell, because he wanted an assassin. The gods wept.

Oh! Blast the blighted halls of the Maker, Mother is at it again. Apparently she's meeting an "old friend" with a "marriageable son" for "afternoon tea." She is so lucky I’m hungry.

Until next time, Kasei my dear. Ooh, I didn’t think I’d ever write that again. What a funny old world.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts! Comfort after a rough day again, and a smattering of Gifts!


	7. A Dog for the Dog Lord

Dear Kasei,

Do I need to tell you that tea was a disaster? Apparently, proper noble ladies aren’t supposed to order plates with names like “The Full Fathom” at afternoon tea. You should have seen Mother’s face as I dove into the pile of fried fish and squid. Her dainty cucumber sandwich absolutely wilted in shame. Priceless.

So, where was I… ah. She left me alone for a few days after the incident with the Starkhaven prince, but there were always other dances, other luncheons, and always the same look of long-suffering maternal disappointment when I refused them. I very nearly thought she’d given up for good, but one afternoon, there was a different sort of knock at my door.

…

“I said I don’t want any, Mother.” 

Hawke hadn’t bothered to so much as lift her head. Whatever it was, likely a stale pastry or another Hightown outing, it wasn’t nearly as enticing as her bed, which was low and soft and as close to his as she could find. 

“I’m sure she’ll be sorry to hear that,” a gravelly voice replied.

She froze. Andraste’s pyre, she hadn’t seen Varric since their return. He… had come to her? Something to do with the thaig, surely. Business with the businessman, nothing more. She kicked the linens down and threw a wrinkled dress on over her bare skin and ran fingers through her hair, cursing under her breath as she looked frantically for her brush. It was nowhere to be found. Her heart clattered in her chest like a runaway carriage horse, stupid in its terror. She opened the door.

Filtered sunlight rested softly on his shoulders and in his hair. An errant shaft lit half his face in cool blue and made the stubble on his chin sparkle. Her fingers ached to touch it. His full lips parted as his eyes darkened to better see her in the darkness of her room. She sniffed, surprised to see matching smudges under his eyes, a similar slackness to his cheeks that spoke of sleepless nights enough to match hers. He curled his lips into a liar’s smile and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“Hawke.” 

His voice was husky, rougher than usual, deeper. His eyes swept over her, intense and searching, like he was seeing her for the first time after so long merely looking. She shivered.

“Varric.”

“Blessed Summerday.”

She blinked. “Summerday.” So that’s why Mother had been so damned insistent earlier. “I’d forgotten… er, I mean. Blessed Summerday to you.”

They stared at each other, Varric with his odd new intent, Hawke with increasing impunity. The tension flipped seamlessly from electric to unbearable. Hawke clenched her teeth, her hand on the door, desperate for release from this unsettling friction.

“Hawke.” The moment snapped. She looked away. “I have something for you. A surprise.”

She huffed. “Not big on surprises these days.”

He shook his head in her peripheral. “You’ll like this one. It’s in Lowtown, though, so…”

Lowtown. Varric. At least she’d get to wear her leathers without judgment this time. “I’ll need to change in to something less comfortable.”

He hummed. “I’ll be downstairs.”

She closed the door with a sigh of relief. Bodahn had hung her clean, oiled leathers in the wardrobe with care. All she had to do was put them on. Just, open the wardrobe, pull on some linen unders, and buckle herself into her old skin. She stared at them, flaccid on their hangers, useless against the pricks and jabs of her new station. Maybe… maybe this ill-fitting life didn’t need to be hers. She slipped into the Mother-forbidden leggings made of good Fereldan flax, her father’s threadbare tunic. She hummed a low tune as she slid leather over soft cloth, _have you heard the news, me Johnny?_

Saoirse Marian Hawke took in her reflection. Her deep grey-green eyes stared dully from her ashen face, and her dark hair, just a shade away from pitch, hung to her jaw in limp waves. She tipped her chin up and her shoulders back to force a defiant gleam into her eye. She admired the deadly shine on her polished blades. She practiced her lopsided grin. Felt a little stiff, but she’d work it out. Hawke gave her reflection a lazy salute, the one that had driven her superior officers apoplectic with its insubordination, the one that made her best friend grin like an idiot. Maker, she’d missed that dwarf even after he’d broken her heart, and here she was, making faces in the mirror as he waited for her. She turned, dropped a wink over her shoulder, and went to him.

Kirkwall had come alive for the celebration. Every child in the city had been dressed in white, given sweets, and turned loose to run feral through narrow corridors and market squares alike. Hawke watched with vicarious glee as a swarm of them descended on the pie cart and took off just as quickly, shouting and laughing as they ate their stolen sweets on the run. The baker’s husband smiled to see them go as he set out another tray of half-moon pastries for the next wave. Varric tugged her on.

They wove their way down the steps, dodging sticky children and shameless couples. Hawke found herself smiling as they crossed the Lowtown bazaar, actually smiling, light and easy. She sighed, happy. Varric glanced up at her. She met his gaze, full of concern and care and… something new she wouldn’t dare name. Not after his half-sleeping confession, not even after all these months. Warmth welled in her chest, a little bit forgiveness, a little bit acceptance, a little bit pure, liquid gratitude that he was still her friend. She draped her arm across his broad shoulders, his arm circled around her waist, and their bodies came together like an answered question, like a perfectly rhymed couplet. She watched the Hanged Man’s hanged man swing in the breeze as they passed by.

“Not heading in?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Different sort of surprise,” he said. 

They turned down one narrow street, then another. He stopped before a row of ancient tenements hewn into the rock, slave housing back in the Tevinter days made chaotic and colorful with haphazard additions of busted shipping crates and laundry hanging to dry. He left her side to knock on the door, then flinched back at the wall of canine sound her heart soared to hear. She looked down at him, eyes wide. He grinned up at her, not quite recovered enough to be smug.

A woman’s voice sounded from behind the door, warm and commanding and thoroughly Fereldan. Hawke could feel the shape of her mouth changing in sympathy, the muscles remembering their old habits her mother had tried so hard to school away. Was it someone she knew? A former neighbor from some forgotten hamlet? The door opened to a tanned, deeply lined face in an explosion of frizzy grey hair. Ah, no, they were strangers. The woman’s dark eyes flicked from her to Varric, mildly amused. Varric greeted her with a warm formality that the woman grinned to hear. Her focus narrowed to hear Hawke speak, no doubt contrasting the accent with her strange dwarven leathers and the exotic daggers at her back.

She must have liked what she saw, or perhaps she heard the truth in Hawke’s memory of her own dog. She waved them in past her handsome pair, Bergie the black and Snoots the black-point fawn. The dogs were remarkable even for mabari, raw muscle and keen intellect in perfect balance. Hawke nearly vibrated with anticipation as they wound through the tenement to the pups’ room.

The Fereldan opened the door and began rattling off colors and places. Hawke wasn’t listening. Twelve perfect mabari pups rolled and growled over the floor, a riot of earthy colors that struck right in the place she held everything they’d lost in the flight from Lothering. She sank to her knees. Three pups came over to tumble on her legs, heavy for their tiny, furry bodies. She played back, tugging and rolling, but none of them wanted more than a lap to leap from. None of them wanted her. They scampered off. She watched them go, suddenly bereft. Varric stepped closer to her. She leaned lightly against his thigh as he asked about the missing pup. The woman frowned. He insisted. She left to fetch the pup with a shrug.

“This is her,” the woman said as she returned. “Right pain in the arse, this one. Gotta keep her separate from the others or she nips ‘em bloody. Gas like you wouldn’t believe.”

Hawke looked at the squirming pup. She was a fury alright, all white teeth and black claws fighting against the woman’s grip. The Fereldan let her down and she bolted straight for Varric at a full bay. He leapt back with his hands out, completely unprepared for this tiny ball of fur and rage. Hawke plucked the dark brindle pup neatly off her feet, saving both of them from further embarrassment. She looked at Varric with a huff, then turned to meet Hawke’s steady gaze. Her little chest heaved against Hawke’s fingers, her black spotted tongue stiff behind her teeth, her warm amber eyes narrowed on the creature that would dare keep her from her prey. 

Hawke just held her, calm and sure, and soon she relaxed with a soft whine. Hawke grinned then, sweeping her thumb along the the pup’s loose skin. The Fereldan cawed a relieved laugh as the pup wiggled and licked at Hawke’s nose, trying to get closer to her human. Hawke set her down and she jumped right back into her lap, hopping on her stubby hind legs to lick the air near Hawke’s chin. Bergie muffed, reminding the pup of her manners. The pup slopped one last wet lick at Hawke’s face and ran to her mother’s belly, happy to be part of the group. 

“She needed you, sister,” the Fereldan said. She peered at them from behind her hair. “Blessed Summerday, friends. You can collect her in three weeks, but she needs a name now. Otherwise she’s like to forget, and I’ll have to go back separating them.”

Hawke smiled. She had just the name.

“Mace.”

The woman nodded. “Mace, hear that?” The pup let out a squeaky whine, and she grinned. “Mace. Fine choice, sister. Can you see yourselves out? I ought to stay, make sure this peace holds.”

Varric offered his arm. Hawke took it, careful not to let her fingers trail and caress as they very much wanted to. She held herself together until they stepped from the tenement, but the dam broke as they returned to the dusty Lowtown sunshine. She pulled him to face her and bent to sweep him into a hug, her nose buried in his collar, soft skin close enough to kiss. He returned it as best he could, his hands at her shoulders, his jaw rough on her neck. She sighed. He moved against her like a lover, like…

He broke away. She shook her trembling confusion off. _Steady on, Hawke,_ she scolded herself, _reading anything into this is only going to hurt in the end._ She twisted her lips into a half grin.

“How did you know?” she asked.

He smiled his liar’s smile. “Do you know how it pained me to hear you called dog lord while you didn't have a dog? Sure it's tame as insults go, but the slander hurt.” He elbowed her, dropping the affect. “Mace, though? I thought I was your mace.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “A mabari needs a name that means something, that’s as much a part of its owner as breath and bone.” She took a calculated risk. “I could hardly call her Varric, that’s taken.” 

She watched her words detonate like a perfectly timed grenade, his lips parting and his ears flushing scarlet as he caught her meaning. She shrugged with a practiced lightness and started walking as though she hadn’t just scored a massive point in this strange little game of chicken he seemed intent on playing with her. A few steps later, she realized he wasn’t at her side. She turned back to see him frozen, his eyes unfocused. She cleared her throat. He looked up at her, blinking through the bright sunlight. She tilted her head down the road, fighting the crow of victory that threatened to soar from her throat. Varric shook his head and trotted to catch her, and she led them back to the ‘Man.

He opened the door for her in his gentle mockery of noble manners, so she favored him with a puff of shed dog fur she’d pulled from her leathers. He groaned.

“Hey,” she said as they settled in at the bar, “at least it’s not the other half of that fish.”

“Maker, don’t remind me,” he said with a grimace. 

Corff slid two tankards of bitter to them. “Blessed Summerday, friends! Who’s buying?”

“I am,” Hawke and Varric said at once. They mock-glared at each other.

“Whoa, whoa!” Corff held up his hands. “Alright. In the spirit of the holiday, they’re on the house. Can’t be the source of a lovers’ spat on Summerday,” he said with a shiver, “Maker’s breath, that’s bad luck for the rest of the year!”

“Lovers?” Hawke said as her heart leapt to her throat.

“Spat?” Varric said, eyes wide in shocked innocence.

They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Free drinks!” Hawke said, and took a long swallow to cover the hammering in her chest. 

The afternoon passed slowly. Hawke noticed a small reluctance in him when she asked about the thaig, and she pressed gently around it to find the exact size and shape of the truth he was skirting. She hit a wall when she asked how he’d find buyers for the stranger relics. His lips turned down at the corners as his eyes became hard and cold, and she let him steer the conversation to calmer waters. She confessed a new fear of the dark when the flow of his words dwindled. He did the same, rueful that a dwarf should share it. She put her hand over his with a sad smile. He looked at their hands on the bar, lost. She squeezed gently and released him to take her tankard once more. He took his hand from the bar and put it on his lap, out of reach. She chided herself for overstepping.

The tavern filled as the sun went down. Varric perked up as it did, and soon he slid from the stool with a grin. Hawke finished her ale, grabbed a last handful of pretzels, and followed.

“Where are we off to now?” she asked, crunching.

“Carnival,” he answered.

“Carnival?” The word was strange in her mouth. Or, maybe that was the pretzels.

Varric looked at her dumbly. “Carnival. Fried dough, smoked shanks, big sparkly amusements?” She shrugged. Those all sounded grand, but she couldn’t picture it. “Are you telling me,” he paused, “that your parents never took you to a carnival?”

She pointed to herself. “Fereldan. We had festivals?”

He shook his head. “Not remotely the same, and now we are definitely going to the carnival.”

It was everything he said it would be and more. She clutched the greasy paper and its fried dough, the crinkling of the bag nearly as satisfying as the steaming treat within. They tore pieces from it and popped them in their mouths, laughing because it burned but too swept up in the lights and the sounds and the sweetness to care. Varric led her through an alley he called an arcade, tests of skill in brightly lit tents, torches in the ground that led them deeper into the chaos. 

They finished the fried dough as they came to the test of strength, and the man hawking his game underestimated them in the most delicious way. Hawke cracked her knuckles and paid him back as best she knew how, by breaking his stuff and rubbing his nose in it. She swelled with pride to see Varric go right along with her, picking up where she left off and winning the most ridiculous object she’d ever seen. She gave the giant toy nug to a child barely big enough hold it, then turned her sparkling attention to the rest of the carnival. A spinning contraption caught her eye, all whirling metal and happy screaming.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Looks like a teacup spinner, makes you dizzy. Drink a pitcher, twirl yourself around, and save me the coin,” he said with a grin.

She bumped him with her hip, looking around. A huge structure caught her eye, a cart wheel taller than most of the houses she’d grown up in. Her heart fluttered to see its slow, stately motion. 

“How about the tall one?”

“The skywheel? You’ve never been… of course you haven’t.” She watched the muscle pop in his temple as he tensed, and she wondered if the height worried him. He exhaled sharply, seeming to have decided something far greater than what diversion they’d take in next. “Alright.”

She studied the thing as Varric paid, the massive gears, the bronto hitched to one on the ground, a dusty track worn into the dirt around it. The hulking beast blew hard in his harness, and she felt a stab of guilt for asking more of him. Varric nudged her gently, tilting his head to the waiting cabin. She folded herself into the small space, surprised that it seemed to be meant for two. He held onto the center pole as it swung, easing himself down on the seat across from her. They shuffled their legs, each trying for a certain decorum the cabin was entirely too small to allow. 

The door slammed shut, nearly taking Varric’s toes off. He pressed hard against her leg with a muttered curse and stayed there. Desire spiked in Hawke’s belly, low and scorching. She leaned back against the cold sides and spread her arms across the top rail, stiff with wanting and unwilling to let on. The handler gave a shout. The bronto heaved against his traces, and the skywheel resumed its circular course. Her focus shifted as the ground dropped away. She’d been in plenty of high places before, treetops as a child, arrow slits and battlements when she trained in Lothering, the bloody mountain just north of Kirkwall. This was different. She felt exposed here, completely at the mercy of the people who’d made this insane machine, and of those who used it every day. Her fingers clamped down on the railings. She felt Varric study her, concerned. Shit.

“They’re all so small,” she said, desperate to distract him from her unease. “It looks so… peaceful.”

“That’s distance for you,” he said, sharing her gaze.

She drew her attention from the ground to the dwarf before her. He turned back to meet it, and she wondered what he saw. Her eyes flicked to his lips and back before she could stop herself. He seemed troubled, strangely uncertain. Their legs pressed together, stoking the heat at her core as he watched and waited, as her eyes took the liberty of their silence to go on a treacherous journey, taking in his parted lips, his thick neck, the strong jaw, the heavy, shining necklace she’d never seen him without. Her fingers curled on the cold sides of their skywheel cabin.

“Copper for your thoughts,” he said, his voice strained.

“I—”

The skywheel ground to a halt and her heart lurched. The cabin swung peacefully. They looked down to see the bronto being unhitched, a fresh one waiting to the side. She looked at him, only a handful of careful breaths away from losing her goddamn mind.

“Changing the brontos,” he said. “We’ll move again in a few minutes.”

She nodded, consumed with her breath count and the growing screeching in her mind that this was a _most_ unnatural situation to be in and she needed to _get out_ even as she tried desperately to understand what _out_ meant when she was dangling in the air. Varric laid his hand on her knee. She flinched as one kind of screeching stopped dead and a completely different sort took its place. He moved away, but she shook her head with a strangled noise.

“Leave it. I just wasn’t expecting…” She looked at him. He put his hand back. “Why do you do that?” she asked, fighting with everything she had to sound like a person not remotely about to have a severe case of nerves twenty feet up.

“Do what?” he asked, liar’s smile firmly in place.

She bit her cheek. “You reach for me, but draw away the moment I react. You want to stay, but you’re scared, so scared.” She put her hand over his, calling his bluff. “What are you scared of, Varric Tethras?”

He was quiet for a moment. She watched him, height and stillness forgotten, consumed with whatever he would do next. Victory felt imminent.

“What do you want, Hawke?”

She knitted her brows, confused. A question for a question was the oldest trick in the book, but this one made no… sense. No. It made more sense than she could endure. Maker’s _balls,_ the dwarf played dirty. Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered their fight at the inn when she’d thrown those words at him like a gauntlet. She sniffed against the memory of him sitting on his heels before her on the Deep Roads, whispering the promise he’d just now fulfilled. She blinked and a tear escaped to roll down her cheek. He leaned forward, his hand gloveless on her skin, the rough thumb brushing her face with all the tenderness she’d never been brave enough to want. She leaned into his warm, dry palm.

“Tonight—” she said, a hiccup cutting the word short. She swallowed. “Tonight, I could do with some company.”

He pressed his fingers into her hair, drawing her near. She closed the distance willingly, stopping only when he did. They watched each other across the pristine line separating them, long guarded by words both careful and reckless, its sanctity a living thing they had fed and nurtured since that horrible morning in the Four Songs. Up there in the stalled skywheel, far away from the world and its troubles, his hand on her cheek, his breath in her ears, this strange new glint in his eye, the line between them begged for violation.

“Okay,” he said, little more than a whisper. “We can start with that.”

She darted forward before his lips could seal on the final consonant. The cabin rocked but even the answering twist in her stomach couldn’t give her pause. He caught her as he always did, filling his hands with as much as they could hold. Again her mind reeled with his kiss, finesse and raw passion in an exquisite balance. She slid her hands over his chest, finally making good on every drunken threat. He was warm and solid and soft, until he shifted and the muscle below her fingers flexed. She inhaled sharply at the smooth transmutation of flesh to stone. An answering chuckle rumbled from somewhere deep beneath her touch. She broke away, overwhelmed with what they’d done. What had they done? She rested her forehead on his. Undaunted, he nudged her up to reclaim her lips. She let him while her mind whirled. _What had they done?_

The skywheel jerked back to life, separating them. He leaned back, letting her hair trail through his fingers. She remembered how to breathe. He gave himself a small shake as his unfocused eyes sharpened. She watched him, bursting with hope, not trusting it in the least. Last time she’d let that kind of hope in…

“Hanged Man?” he asked, his voice rough. 

There it was again, that new edge in his voice, in his face. They’d always flirted, ha-ha we’re flirting because it’s fun and we’re young and it’s good practice. Hawke was very careful not to mean it, even when she did. Varric was equally careful, so she would know that he didn’t really mean it, so she wouldn’t get hurt. There were rules, understood and strictly followed. Except that just then, he wasn’t careful. He hadn’t been careful since he'd knocked on her door. He’d torn up the rules and used them for confetti. Which meant…

“Hanged Man,” she answered.

He unlatched the cabin door as they neared the ground, and they leapt from the skywheel before it could stop. The man shouted after them. His voice was lost in the mad hollering between her ears. What was she doing?

For the moment, she was flying through a carnival at the heels of a dwarf. They wound through the growing crowds, dirt churning to mud under hundreds of feet and spilled drinks. Varric didn’t slow when they reached the city walls, but led her on at a quickening pace through the corridors and down the wide steps to Lowtown. He didn’t slow when they reached the ‘Man, didn’t slow until they were in his rooms with the door bolted behind them. Her heart pounded, and only in part from racing down half of Kirkwall. She reached for him, pushing the inevitable crash back to reality away for as long as she could. He took her hips and walked her backward, slow, measured, wicked. She curled her lips into an encouraging smile.

Her calves hit the edge of his bed and she folded herself down as he set to work on her leathers. She watched, remembering the times in the deep where he’d learned the careful process, which buckles needed to be loosened, the ties that could stay. She glanced up at him as he worked, looking for reassurance that he wasn’t doing this out of frustration or revenge. His gaze was one of calm concentration, and was that… relief? He met her eyes with a small smile as he pulled the cuirass from her shoulders.

The air between them shifted when he moved to her trousers. His fingers shook as he slid the belt from its buckle. She put her hands over his when he went for the stays at her hips. His amber eyes flicked up to hers, dark and serious. She untied the laces, and he knelt at her feet to gather the leather into his hands, lips parted, a question in his hesitation. She lifted her hips in answer. Chill air chased him down as he pulled, gooseflesh prickling in response. 

She tucked her scarred legs away and reached for him once again. He allowed it this time, thrusting his chest out slightly, so like a courting pigeon she had to bite her cheek to keep the laughter within. She made quick work of his layers but he stopped her before she could lay him bare, catching her hands and her lips. She melted into his kiss even as her mind reeled.

Varric noticed her hesitation. He broke away and drew them both fully onto the bed. He rested on his side, propped up on his elbow. Hawke slid an arm below his pillow to lay her head on it, content to look up at him. His hair had come undone. It complemented his features, the soft tendrils making them somehow more masculine rather than less. She played with it, sweeping it back from his brow, letting it fall. He closed his eyes under her touch, just for a moment. She studied him for a whiff of uncertainty. She found none. Strange.

“There you are,” she said, finding herself incredibly at his mercy and more incredibly still, happy to be so.

He looked at her, hunger lightened by humor, desire run through with restraint. She realized with a shudder that he’d given her a choice. She could end it here. Walk away and keep everything as it was, no harm, no foul, no hard feelings. Or, with the smallest crook of her finger, she could have it all. Restraint, humor, desire, hunger… it was all there for her to take, or to refuse. 

“You found me,” he said, his voice rough. “Choose your prize.”

_You._

She couldn’t say it. It was greedy, unrealistic, more than she deserved. He might be hers for a night, but he could never be _hers._ Not while his lies all took the same diminutive shape, petite and adored, the sacred tragedy of his past. So. She would take a night. She would take what he might offer, and she would be careful, so careful, to never ask for more.

“The tunic.”

…

What? You were expecting details? Kasei, I am surprised at you! A lady would never kiss… well I’ve done that. A lady would never fuck and tell. And now I hear that I’m no lady? Well… that’s fair. I’ll tell you this. Dwarven stamina absolutely lives up to the hype, and dwarven ah, anatomy, certainly does as well. I have never come so many times in one night. I’m ruined for humans, Kasei, ruined. 

I stayed all night, not that we slept much, and we broke our fast with the ‘Man’s finest hogslop in the morning. He was so delicate, Kasei, so… fragile. I felt almost that I was taking care of him, even as he served me. Whatever certainty he discovered at the carnival had fled with the night. I gave him an out, blamed this, this thing between us on the Deep Roads. He was so relieved, my dear, so relieved. I could have cried. 

I didn’t, of course. I stood up and put my armor on and cracked wise and moved forward like a good Hawke. Father would have been proud. 

Until next time, Kasei dear.

Love,  
Hawke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts! Date Night and Gifts, and the ever present Mutual Pining. 
> 
> I've started working on Act II of Everything, so this won't update as often moving on. It will catch up and fall behind the main story quite a bit, which is just the nature of this particular beast.


End file.
